(5 minutes read)
- The wanderlust South Africans were closeted to the confines of their homes for a long time due to the pandemic
- Travel bans are easing across the world
- There is also a pent-up demand for travel and South Africans are now planning to venture out. But they are upfront with a few uncertainties
The good news is that the world is reopening to travellers after the heightened fear of Covid-19 pandemic. This is particularly true for South Africans. The wanderlust South Africans were closeted to the confines of their homes for a long time due to the pandemic. Travel bans are easing across the world. There is also a pent-up demand for travel. South Africans are now planning to venture out. But they are upfront with a few uncertainties.
The travel industry although upbeat about the development is still grappling how to tap the emerging opportunities to bounce back to the pre-Covid-19 stage. They are hopeful of making it during this year’s Black Friday. The term has a US import. It is the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the United States. Many stores offer highly promoted sales on Black Friday and open very early. Black Friday has been the busiest shopping day of the year in the United States since 2005. It is also celebrated in countries like South Africa, Russia etc.
Black Friday is particularly relevant to the South African tourism industry. Travelling picks up during the season. A good number of them used to travel around the world to cool their heels in their favorite destinations. For the last two years, this season almost went dry or at best confined to domestic tourism operations due to uncertainty around. Black Friday celebrations were skipped.
Happily, things are changing. But certainly, there will be a change in the way in which people are going to travel with a number of hot destinations yet to open up. In the meantime, tour operators are working out packages by building heavy discounts on it. This time around, many expect that the discounts for packages can vary between 20% and 30%.
But there are supply constrains that may interfere with the travel trade. That is limited availability airline seats. This is because of mainly two reasons. The first, most of the airlines in the continent have been folded up in the last two years or so. Secondly, not many international airlines have resumed their operations to Africa fearing continuity of a lean season. Therefore, there is the problem of a limited number of seats in the aircraft, which may force many airlines to push up their prices.
Yet, the travel-starved South Africans may find bargains in related sectors like hospitality. The much needed help is seemingly coming from hoteliers to capitalize on the Black Friday craze and leverage that for renewing global interest in travel. Travel restrictions followed by many countries still may take the sheen out from South Africans. For instance, the hotspot of South Africans –Bali in Indonesia- still not lifted the travel restrictions and do not allow flights from South Africa, so also important destinations like Greece, Italy and Portugal. That may force more South Africans to visit places like Maldives, Zanzibar, Mauritius, and Thailand, where restrictions have been considerably relaxed. Also, that may motivate more people to travel domestically even by road.
Admittedly, the travel industry expects a lot to happen from now onwards. But these optimistic estimates largely depend on how soon the world will get back to normalcy since travel trade is highly sensitive to many factors and important among them are health hazards and safety.
