TOMSA levy collections mirrors SA’s impressive tourism performance

Pretoria – The Tourism Marketing Levy South Africa (TOMSA) – a voluntary levy collection system set up to provide additional marketing funding to promote ‘Destination SA’ collections – has shown  have mirrored South Africa’s impressive tourism performance.This according to the Tourism Business Council of South Africa (TBCSA) – administrators of TOMSA, CEO Mmatšatši Marobe, who says the international tourist arrivals in 2007 grew by an estimated 8,6 percent from January to December to reach a new record figure of nearly nine million. “An astonishing  achievement given that eight million was only received two years earlier – when South Africa only recorded 8.4 million tourist arrivals,” she said.

Marobe said this should be viewed as the country’s confirmation of a good momentum sustaining the growth of 2006. She says TOMSA has given a clear indication that the country has done well in 2007 recording an increase of 19 percent for a period January to December 2007 – thus enabling the industry to contribute R62 million to SA Tourism in 2007 compared to R52 million in 2006.

“The TOMSA levy collection for 2007 was so good that the TOMSA and TBCSA board recently approved the transfer of additional funds to SA Tourism which will surely be welcomed by the organisation as they finalise their preparation for their 2008/09 financial year.”

Marobe also says that in the longest holiday period (December to January) the collections have already surpassed even the CPIX of 8,6 percent.  “We are now standing at 14,6 percent – a difference of about six percent compared to 2007 collections.”

The best performing markets in 2007 were Asia which increased by 13,8 percent from 175,661 tourist arrivals in 2006 to  199,855 in 2007, the Middle East increased by 11,6 percent from 33,245 arrivals to 37,093 in 2007, North America increased by 10,0 percent from 275,659 arrivals in 2006 to 303,361 in 2007 and the Africa Mainland stood at 9,6 percent from 5,650,337 arrivals to 6,190,806 in 2007.

In the same period (January to November 2007), the most improved markets were Central and South America with an increase of 6.2 per cent from 49,131 in 2006 to 52,156 in 2007.

Australasia tourist arrivals increased by 5.9 percent from 96,422 to 102,072 arrivals in 2007, while Indian ocean islands increased by 5,0 percent from 15,172 arrivals to 15,934 in 2007.

Marobe says against this background the country can do much better if all tourism role-players were to contribute to TOMSA. She says a disappointing fact is that there are businesses and operators who collect the levy but decide not to pay it over. “This is a criminal offence and constitutes fraud,” she says. “Where money has been collected from tourists, it must be paid over to the fund within 45 days.”

According to Marobe rogue collectors who do not comply with the spirit of the agreement will be handed over to the credit bureau, prosecuted and publicised. “The TBCSA and TOMSA will continue in 2008 to work with SA Tourism in an effort to boost the marketing strategy that will include considerable measurements of how the country is performing to benchmark it with our competitors.”

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