CHAPTER THREE (3)
3.2 PLANNING FOR LONG TERM: VISION 2030
3.2.7 TOURISM AS A KEY ECONOMIC SECTOR
According to the World Tourism Organisation, tourism is the world's largest economic sector generating almost $500 billion per year and providing direct and indirect employment to some 340 million people. Globally, tourism accounts for roughly 35%
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of exports of services and over 8 % of exports of goods.
Tourism has also earned the accolade of being one of the fastest growing sectors in the world economy, and is predicted to grow its volume of arrivals to 1,56 billion in 2020.
Driving this exponential growth over the last five decades has been a number of key trends:
Rising incomes and disposable incomes in the leading tourism-generating markets of North America, Western Europe and Japan
Increased leisure time available for travel
Economic globalisation, including innovations in transport and information and communication technologies, which have made travel cheaper and more accessible.
These trends have created important opportunities for many countries, particularly those in the developing world. For 83% of countries in the world, tourism is one of the top five sources of foreign exchange.
Caribbean countries, for example, derive half their GDP from tourism. For governments in developing nations, tourism has the added attraction of being labour intensive with comparatively low barriers to entry for entrepreneurs.
It also has relatively high employment multipliers and can create many jobs in a
comparatively short time. Outside of the core tourism value chain, the employment multipliers are strong as jobs are created in supporting industries, such as financial services, construction, cleaning, security, laundry, arts and crafts, food and beverages, etc.
Tourism also offers the opportunity of bringing development to rural areas, and can allow for the sustainable utilization of the natural environment. It is also a force in building the global identity of a country or city (i.e. its brand identity). International travel patterns are changing.
In 1950, 97 per cent of international tourists went to Europe or North America.
By 1999 this had fallen to around 75 per cent. In recent years, domestic and
intra-regional tourism in the developing world has grown rapidly, especially in emerging economies such as South Africa, Brazil, Thailand, India, Korea, China and Mexico.
Over 80 per cent of all international tourists come from just 20 countries in the North – 17 in Europe plus the USA, Canada and Japan. Five nations (the US, Japan, Germany, France and the UK) account for almost half of all tourism spending.
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It is estimated that there will be 77.3 million international arrivals to Africa by 2020; this represents an annual growth rate of 5.5% from 1995 to 2020. Africa’s overall share will increase to 5% of total by 2020.
Following its transition to democracy and entry into the global economy, South Africa is fast becoming one of the world’s leading new tourism destinations. The development of South Africa as a tourism destination has mainly been a result of tourism development initiatives that have been undertaken by government subsequent to the elections in 1994.
The isolationism of old apartheid system has delayed South Africa’s entry onto the world stage in many areas, including travel and tourism. This limited the benefits that the industry could deliver both economically and socially.
The tourism industry was not regarded as a key component of economic growth and development prior to 1994. In 1994, at the end of the Apartheid era, the South African Government announced an ambitious campaign to make tourism one of the country’s key industries in the creation of new jobs and generation of foreign earnings.
The vision was to develop the tourism industry as a national priority in a sustainable and acceptable manner, in order for it to contribute significantly to the improvement of the quality of life of all South Africans. Government accepted tourism as one of its main interventions to reverse a sluggish economy, high unemployment rate, weak domestic and foreign investment, and to mobilize SMME capacity.
The result is that tourism is now a significant industry in South Africa, employing by various estimates somewhere between 700,000 and 1,1 million people, directly and indirectly.
The industry is served by approximately 46 international air1ines, 6 domestic airlines, 4 principal vehicle hire companies, 3 principal coach companies, an estimated 13,000 direct contact service enterprises and a multitude of supply industries to the aforementioned. . In the domestic economy, tourism accounts for over 7.1% of GDP and 6.9% of total employment.
Tourism therefore has enormous potential to accelerate the growth of Matjhabeng economy, and to create local jobs, particularly within the context of a declining mining sector. In this regard, a concerted focus on two niched tourism sub-sectors are proposed, namely:
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Mining Tourism
Agricultural Tourism
These are outlined further below:
(a) MINING TOURISM:
Both international and local tourists could be targeted to learn more about Matjhabeng’s mining history through visiting mine museums (including underground museums), and taking guided mining tours. Mines that are no longer operational could therefore be leveraged in order to serve as income generating and job creating assets.
(b) AGRI-TOURISM
Agri-tourism provides the opportunity for a range of tourist activities to be developed, including bed and breakfasts, guesthouses, lodges, hiking trails, horse-back riding trails, etc.
The development of these two tourism sub-sectors will require detailed planning and aligned investment.
3.2.8 FREE STATE PROVINCIAL INTERVENTION TO SUPPORT SMME