SA Tourism wet the appetite on Japanese Trade

Tokyo – South African Tourism has partnered with South African tourism product to bring Mzansi closer to the Japanese market. Friday 15 June 2007 saw over 150 of Japan’s most influential travel trade exposed to the sights, sounds and delights of South Africa at the last of a series of workshops undertaken by South African Tourism.

The destination marketing organisation, together with a select group of strategically chosen South African trade toured the key Japanese and Korean centres of Tokyo, Osaka, Busan and Seoul, bringing the messaging that South and southern Africa is open for business with Japanese and Korean travel trade.

Members of the Japanese and Korean trade arrived in record numbers at workshops designed to improve their knowledge of the plethora of product available with which to do business in South Africa.

Amongst key southern African trade to travel to Japan and Korea for the workshops were Sun International, Legend Lodges, Zimbabwe Tourism, South African Airways and the Western Cape.

“Japan has been identified as one of our key investment markets and we have dedicated significant resources in educating and exciting the travel trade, with success. With these workshops we are consolidating our position and stimulating growth,” commented Zolelwa Mukozho, Portfolio Manager for the Asia Pacific region at South African Tourism.

2006 saw nearly 32 000 Japanese and almost 17 000 Korean nationals visiting South Africa.  This represented a 17.2% increase over the previous year for the Japanese market and 13.4% for the Korean market.

Recently released figures for January 2007 confirm the upward trend with arrivals from Japan at 9.4% greater than the same period in 2006 and Korean arrivals at an astounding 63.8% over the same period last year.

“We are encouraged by the positive figures but cannot rest our laurels.  In order to achieve our strategic goals of increasing the volume of tourist arrivals, spend, and length of stay; improving seasonality and geographic spread; and promoting transformation within the local industry, we will have to continue to work with the trade, both in South Africa and in this region, to ensure that more Japanese and Korean visitors have the opportunity to experience the splendour of South Africa for themselves,” Mukozho said.

To this end, South African Tourism has worked with the South African Embassy in Tokyo to lobby for direct flights from Korea.  Negotiations with Korean Air are underway and are expected to result in a flight from Seoul via Shanghai to Johannesburg.

“One of the key strategic moves made by South African Tourism in the last two years has been to lobby strongly for greater airlift from our key markets and we are gratified to have our efforts begin to bear fruit in this way,” concluded Mukozho.

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