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African governments are increasingly focusing on attracting more business tourists to meetings, conferences and exhibitions in their countries to boost economic growth, according to consultancy group PwC.
Governments do this by improving infrastructure and facilities for such gatherings and by adding more flight routes to their countries, said Pietro Calicchio, head of the hospitality sector of PwC Southern Africa.
PwC’s latest hotel outlook until 2023 for South Africa, Nigeria, Mauritius, Kenya and Tanzania shows that South Africa has done a lot to expand business tourism, he said.
Out of about 360 conferences in Africa in 2017, most were in South Africa (122), followed by Morocco (33) and Rwanda (21), said Esmaré Steinhöfel, the Africa director of the International Association for Congresses and Conventions, at a conference in Stellenbosch last year. The most popular cities were Cape Town (53), Johannesburg (23) and Kigali in Rwanda (21).
Between 2008 and 2017, most of the conferences were held at facilities in hotels, followed by conference or exhibition centres, Steinhöfel said.
PwC predicts that foreign tourism will rise to about 2.9% per year to 12.1 million in 2023.
Last year, the figure was 10.5 million.
According to Stats SA, 94.9% of these tourists came to South Africa on holiday, with 1.8% coming for work and 1.8% for business. Of these, 17.6% were from the UK.
In 2017, 94.1% of overseas tourists in South Africa were here on holiday, 2.3% for work and 1.8% for business.
Amanda Kotze-Nhlapo, head of the SA National Conventions Bureau (SANCB), which advises and assists people who want to present business events in South Africa, said at the Stellenbosch conference that between 2014 and 2016, up to 30% of conference delegates vacationed in South Africa before and after the conference and spent on average R12 600 per person on accommodation, tours and shopping.
On average, they stayed in hotels for five nights during the conference, and on their own for 3.5 nights before the conference and 3.6 nights afterwards, the SANBC figures show.
According to SANCB, about 80% of the overseas conference delegates stayed in South African hotels.
Calicchio said that as a result of corporate policies on travel, it could be expected that most business travellers stayed in four-star and well-known three-star hotels and that five-star hotels could be expected to attract overseas business travellers.
