Tourism has been growing rapidly in South Africa since 1994, the year of the country’s first democratic elections. In 1994 3.9 million international visitors arrived, almost doubling by 2004 to 6.7 million. In 2010, domestic and international tourist visits totalled 37.8 million (South African Tourism, 2011).

South African Tourism promotes its resources for tourism as six broad tourism activities:

Source: www.southafrica.info

Maasai village tours are popular with tourists. Until 2006, tourists bought tours for about $20 each from driver-guides who retained 96 per cent of this, forcing villagers to supplement their income by pressurising tourists to buy souvenirs (Times Online, 2007).

In 2006 Tribal Voice Communications, funded by The Travel Foundation, led four villages in a pilot project to end this exploitation and create sustainable tourism experiences to increase tourism’s economic benefits and enhance tourists’ experience by facilitating a genuine cultural exchange.

The Mara Triangle Maasai Villages Association was established to negotiate collectively and directly with tour operators, to set up a cashless ticketing system and provide training on business practices, customer service, product development and income distribution. Ticket sales direct to tourists through partners in Nairobi and Mombasa and safari lodges prevented driver-guides from charging entry fees. Villages received 100 per cent of the ticket price from lodges and 75 per cent from tour operator business. Advice to tourists on culturally-sensitive behaviour was printed on each ticket (Travel Foundation, 2007).

Immediately, visits to the four villages dropped because driver-guides stopped visiting. However, revenue increased by 800 per cent from the previous year as a result of the ticketed entry fees. The villages earned $30,000 in the first eight months of operation and visitor surveys showed 100 per cent satisfaction levels (Travel Foundation, 2007). Tourism income was invested in educational and sanitation projects in each village (Tribal Voice Communications, 2010).

The UK is a generating and a receiving region for tourism. In 2009 the UK received 29.9 million visits from overseas tourists (Office for National Statistics (ONS), 2010) and 126 million visits by UK residents (VisitBritain, 2010a), but generated 58.5 million tourist visits to other countries (ONS, 2010).

The top generating countries for UK tourism are France, Ireland, the USA, Germany and Spain, and in 2009 the purposes of all overseas visits to the UK were:

• Holiday: 40 per cent.
• VFR: 29 per cent.
• Business: 21 per cent.
• Study: 2 per cent.
• Other: 8 per cent.

(VisitBritain, 2010b)

Trips by UK residents within the UK were 67 per cent holiday, 19 per cent VFR, and 15 per cent business (VisitBritain, 2010a)

The external environment influences the UK tourism system significantly. UK tourism suppliers need to anticipate the effects of external influences on the demand for their products and take steps to replace falling demand and exploit new opportunities.

Between the end of 2007 and the end of 2009, sterling depreciated by 25 per cent against the US$ and the Euro; this was beneficial for UK tourism as visits to the UK by US and Eurozone visitors became cheaper, and visits by UK residents to the US and Eurozone increased in cost significantly. As a result, the demand for domestic tourism in the UK increased (VisitBritain, 2010a) while outbound tourism fell (ONS, 2010). However, continued recession in the US economy and the subsequent rises in unemployment there are likely to affect the demand for trips to the UK from US tourists, while demand from Ireland is likely to be shaken by the collapse of the Irish economy in November 2010.

In addition, government increases to Air Passenger Duty – a tax levied on all air passengers departing from UK airports – were restructured in 2009 with planned rises in November 2010 increasing the tax on each passenger substantially compared to 2006 levels, depending on the class of travel and distance flown. For example, duty on a business class ticket to Australia was £80 in 2006, rising to £170 in late 2010 (HM Revenue and Customs, 2010). These increases are expected to reduce demand to the UK from long-haul generating regions (VisitBritain, 2010b).

The UK tourism system was again shaken when the US government issued a travel alert to its citizens on 3 October 2010 warning of the likelihood of an Al-Qa’ida terrorist attack against transport systems and tourist infrastructure in the UK and mainland Europe. US tourists were warned to be extra vigilant under these heightened threat conditions.

On 1 January 2010, European Directive 207/58/EC liberalised international passenger rail travel within the EU, allowing European rail operators to compete more freely. This liberalisation affects transit routes to the UK through the Channel Tunnel. At the time of writing, only Eurostar operates through the Tunnel on routes to France and Belgium, however in November 2010, the German rail operator Deutsche Bahn announced that it would begin operating three daily services between London and Amsterdam and Frankfurt from 2013.

Reflective Questions

1. Suggest how tourism suppliers in the UK may be affected by these changes in the external and transit regions.
2. Consider the problems that falls in demand in one generating region may create in destinations.