Foreign airlines to stoke SA tourism
World Cup preparations stir new entrants
October 2, 2009
Tourism to South Africa will receive a major boost this season as a result of new services introduced by foreign airlines attracted by interest stirred by World Cup preparations.
Tourism has been forecast to grow exponentially in the years following the tournament but airlines from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Libya are among those expecting the growth to start this year.
Fast-growing Etihad, based in Abu Dhabi, which has been flying to Johannesburg for the past two years, launched a daily service to Cape Town yesterday. This delighted business people who protested against SAA's decision to withdraw all its overseas services from the city, except those to the UK, early this year, and concentrate them in Johannesburg.
Emirates Airline, based in Dubai, which already flies to both Johannesburg and Cape Town, launched a daily service to Durban yesterday, becoming the only global airline apart from Air Mauritius to fly there.
And Afriqiyah, Libya's national airline, is now providing the first direct flights between Johannesburg and Tripoli. Until now business people and tourists visiting the oil-rich country have had to go by way of Europe, Turkey or the Middle East. Charmaine Thome, the general manager of Afriqiyah in South Africa, said it had hoped to fly to Cape Town as well but had not yet received air traffic rights to do so.
Peter Baumgarten, the commercial director of Etihad, who arrived on its first flight to Cape Town, said that more than 40 000 expatriates from South Africa and Europe were living in the UAE, providing a permanent market for its flights, but its catchment area for both business travellers and tourists extended throughout Europe and to the US. Pointing out that Cape Town was South Africa's premier tourism destination, he said the airline was confident the country would attract huge growth in tourism through the publicity it was receiving for the World Cup.
Like other airlines based in the Arabian Gulf, Etihad employs many expatriate pilots and cabin crew. Baumgarten said there were 120 nationalities among its aircrew, including many from South Africa.
The airline offers connecting flights to a growing number of countries from Abu Dhabi, and Baumgarten said it was benefiting from the high price of visas introduced this year for South Africans to enter the UK. This encouraged them to change planes in the UAE rather than London. Etihad flies to many cities in Europe and its new US destination is Chicago, a city to which SAA planned to fly before it focused on African routes.
It is proving a popular way to travel between South Africa and Ireland. So far this year 3 000 people from South Africa have flown to Dublin with Etihad and the number coming here from Ireland is estimated to rise in our summer months.
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