Festive tourism season ‘disappoints’, says Fedhasa

THE tourism industry association, Federated Hospitality Association of South Africa (Fedhasa), has expressed disappointment over the sector’s performance during the festive season.

- GCWALISILE KHANYILE

Fedhasa’s national chairperson, Brett Tungay, said their anecdotal statistics for the festive season became very much of a mixed bag across the country, describing it as disappointing.

“The high-end tourism destinations continued to do well, while the mid-level and low-levels saw a drop. The prime spots occupancy rate sat between 80 and 85%, but then, as soon as you went out of the prime tourism spots, most people reported 70 to 75%. That was the general trend for this festive season,” Tungay said.

He added that areas like Mossel Bay and the Waterfront in Cape Town did very well; however other tourism destinations did not have good business.

He highlighted that even those destinations that appear to have done well reported results similar to the previous festive season.

Tungay stated that South Africa saw a really slow start for the first two weeks of the season, and that resulted ina short season.

“It was a shorter season. It was only really two weeks. There has not been much growth. Only the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast had a brilliant comeback,