The government agency responsible for tourism marketing has proposed a massive deal to sponsor Tottenham Hotspur. That money would be better spent getting the basics right.
A formidable £42.5 million, worth R898 million at the time of writing, is what SA Tourism, the government’s tourism marketing arm, has proposed spending on a diverse sponsorship deal with English Premier League (EPL) team, Tottenham Hotspur.
In principle, that is an outstanding idea. The EPL is the most-watched league in the world. It is no accident that national tourism agencies and airlines are frequent sponsors of EPL clubs.
Tottenham is not the best club in England – it isn’t even the best team in north London. It is a stranger to silverware, having won only one EFL Cup since it last won the top division in 1961 and the FA Cup in 1991. Even that lone trophy was 15 years ago.
Yet it is a solid also-ran, averaging fifth on the table in the Premier League era behind Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool, peaking at second five years ago. I’m sure its viewership numbers are not all that bad.
Spurs also has some, albeit limited, connection to South Africa. Mbulelo Mabizela, Steven Pienaar and, briefly, Bongani Khumalo, all plied their trade there, netting Tottenham a grand total of two goals in 27 appearances among them.
Context
The proposed three-year sponsorship deal would give SA Tourism a spot on the sleeve of team shirts, a logo on interview backdrops, match-day advertising, partnership announcements, training camps in South Africa, and free access to tickets and stadium hospitality, which ANC loyalists will no doubt exploit to the fullest.
So if SA Tourism happens to have been given a massive budget, and has almost a billion burning a hole in its pocket, sponsoring Tottenham Hotspur isn’t the worst idea in the world.
Except… context. The South African government is in no position to be splashing cash about on niceties.
The Department of Tourism, under whose auspices SA Tourism falls, has far more important things to do than blow a vast treasure in hard currency on international marketing.
Tour vehicles
When tourists arrive in South Africa, they usually do so via a tour operator, who arranges a package of accommodation and transport according to the tour group’s wishes.
Typically, that might include a couple of days in Cape Town, a drive along the Garden Route, and a safari in the Kruger National Park.
To transport tourists, they either use their own vehicles, or subcontract to one-man-band tour guides who have a vehicle available.
But half of those tour vehicles are standing idle. Operators are paying instalments on them, and paying insurance on them, but they cannot be used because a dysfunctional National Public Transport Regulator (NPTR) thinks tour vehicles are taxis on fixed routes, and is incapable of issuing new vehicle operating permits or renewing existing ones.
Some operators have been waiting years for permit applications that by law ought to be processed in 60 days, or renewals that the law says must be processed in one day.
The only way for tour operators waiting for new permits to keep their struggling businesses afloat and repay their vehicle and business loans is to violate the law, which not only puts their accreditation at risk, but also nullifies insurance should something happen while they’re carrying tourists. Some do so. Many simply let the vehicles rot, and carry the costs.
Operators waiting for renewals have an out: they are permitted to operate, provided that they have the proof that they applied for a renewal in the vehicle. But the police in Shitsville, where the town’s only revenue is extorted from passing motorists, don’t know that.
Dumped
So they impound vehicles that really do lack operator permits, but they also impound vehicles that are perfectly entitled to be on the road, under the renewal application provision. Arguing the law with traffic officers by the side of the road has a low chance of success.
Now you have a dozen disgruntled foreigners, unceremoniously dumped by the side of the highway, 10km outside Shitsville, Nowhere.
Chances are good they’ll be robbed of their possessions by the locals, but you can be sure that the moment they get to a working internet connection, they’ll be all over sites like TripAdvisor.com with bitter complaints about how terrible South Africa is, and how unreliable their tour operator is.
Bam! another small business murdered by a callous and incompetent government.
Often, operators will be a black entrepreneur who bet everything they had on a business loan to buy a vehicle and earn accreditation as a tour guide. SA tourism claims that part of its mandate is: ‘Working to transform the industry so that historically disadvantaged South Africans may benefit from the sector’.
Yet it cares not a whit about obstacles to transformation placed there by the government.
Surly customs
When tourists arrive at our airports, they are usually faced with surly, incommunicative customs officials and passport stampers, who lack even the decency to respond to a greeting.
In Hawaii, tourists get a hibiscus lei around the neck to make them feel welcome. At hotels, tourists get a complimentary glass of champagne.
At South African customs, tourists get a suspicious and disgruntled glare as if they are probably terrorists or spreading disease and are certainly making the passport control officer’s life a misery.
There are many more obstacles to tourism that could easily be resolved by the government, if it could be bothered to do so. If SA Tourism wants tourists to like South Africa, it should start by investing its evidently generous budget on resolving tourism’s domestic problems.
Priorities
As it is, SATSA, the Southern Africa Tourism Services Association, and other industry associations have been lobbying the Department of Tourism, the Department of Transport, and the Department of Home Affairs, to do something about issues like these. Their pleas have largely fallen on deaf ears, and I’m astonished that they haven’t yet run out of patience and taken the government to court.
The Department of Tourism, instead of needing to be lobbied, should be SATSA’s biggest ally in government, and should be kicking down doors at Home Affairs and Transport, offering to help them sort out their act. It would take a fraction of that billion rand to set up a dedicated department within the NPTR to deal with tour vehicle operating licences. It would take a fraction of that billion rand to train customs officials to act friendly and make tourists feel welcome.
Under normal circumstances, SA Tourism’s football sponsorship proposal would be a good way to spend a marketing budget. In context, however, it is outrageous.
Circumstances are not normal. The tourism industry in dire straits. It is doubtful it could even handle an influx of tourists. How is the industry going to take them on safari without tour vehicles?
This is a matter of priorities. It might look grand to sponsor a football team of global stature, but all that does is stroke egos. It will make a nice self-aggrandising line in Squirrel’s State of the Nation Address. ‘Look how great we are, marketing South Africa overseas!’
Attracting tourists, under the circumstances, might do the country’s image more harm than good. The Department of Tourism should clean the house, sweep the doorstep, and remove the dead hand of the state from the local tourism industry, before inviting foreign visitors to review and publicise the mess that it has made.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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