SA Tourism’s R1 billion marketing plan almost as useful as erecting a giant flag

Tourism SA is absolutely right.

Rescuing Eskom and fixing potholes is not their job. Theirs is bringing people and their money into the country.

However, even if printing ‘Visit South Africa’ on a Premier League shirt is going to work, it may not be the best time.

Also Read: ‘Fixing potholes and Eskom is not our job’, says SA Tourism

Just imagine the Spurs fan influx

There you are, sitting in London, gulping your pint while hurling obscenities at some Scouser’s mother as Harry Kane misses another shot. You’ve been a season ticket holder of Spurs for four seasons and you think to yourself, “I fancy a holiday. I feel like going somewhere but I don’t know where.”

After your seventh pint you squint at the sleeve of a player and think, “I should go to South Africa”.

After getting home and telling the missus, you pack, you book your ticket and head for Msanzi! Great! Well done Tourism SA. R1 billion well spent.

However, when you arrive, your Uber busts a tyre, your hotel can’t check you in for another two hours because the electricity is out and when you pass that time walking down the street, you have to avoid being robbed, begged at or, at the very least, accosted by several street vendors trying to sell the same wares.

Our flaws may outshine our country’s beauty.

Remember in 2005 when Benedict Cumberbatch was kidnapped and shoved into the boot of a car in South Africa? Somehow, I’m unconvinced that reading “Visit South Africa” in White Hart Lane would have made the experience any more pleasant.

Similarly, reading that in Spurs’ new stadium couldn’t undo the bad press about anything that may befall a new crop of tourists in South Africa.

Eskom and fixing potholes may not be the job of SA Tourism, but they certainly affect the work that it does. So too does local safety, poverty, and the state of the economy.

A good idea at the wrong time

Marketing ourselves through the Premier League is a good and effective tourism strategy, especially considering how many fans around the world would also be paying to buy the shirt and, by extension, marketing South Africa.

Over 45 million people follow them just across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. If just 0.01% (of those people come to South Africa and spend $5 000, we would have already recouped some 33% of the cost.

It’s not that farfetched to see a healthy return on the investment on paper. If, however, a couple of those 4 500 people don’t have a great time and tell their buddies, it won’t matter how much PR Tourism SA does.

This is the risk of any form of tourism, sure. It’s just that you don’t go all out in selling a product when the product isn’t ready for market, and South Africa’s marketability is currently questionable.

Even the go-to jewel of South African tourism, Cape Town, is engaged with a serious homelessness issue.

Second in command, Durban, can’t be trusted to keep its beaches open and Johannesburg, well, let’s have them decide who they want as mayor first.

These may not be your issues to deal with, Tourism SA, but they will be the issues faced by the tourists you bring in and you need to understand that.

Tourism brought in some R1.5 billion to Durban during the 2022 festive season, so a R1 billion, three-year deal to get international money does seem feasible and frankly exciting.

I’m happy to back it, though Tourism SA must accept that its job goes beyond getting the people here.

It’s also about making sure that the people they bring here are happy when they are here.

Because if we’re paying R1 billion to send thousands of people back around the world to tell their friends and family about what a terrible time South Africa is, I’d much rather have a very large flag pole.

Also Read: Planned R22 million giant flag proves SA government is out of touch with reality, say experts