Claire Bisseker spoke to Wesgro CEO Nils Flaatten about SAA’s withdrawal of direct London-Cape Town flights.

What is your reaction to SAA’s move?

We’re disappointed and while we accept the case SAA is making — that the price of fuel has increased and there are insufficient business travellers on the route — we believe the Western Cape and neighbouring provinces have a strong tourism offering and an efficient airport geared to receiving more tourists. In the final quarter of last year, international air arrivals in Cape Town were up 14% on the previous year.

What impact do you expect the loss of the flights will have on tourism arrivals?

Tourism arrivals in Cape Town — and also for the Eastern Cape and the Garden Route — will be adversely affected. SAA has been flying two direct London flights into Cape Town each week. That capacity is being taken away. Many business and leisure travellers from the US also use London as a connecting flight into Cape Town and so we also risk losing these visitors, as the travelling time has been extended even further.

Shouldn’t we have a national debate and consensus on what airlift strategy best meets the economy’s needs rather than have SAA taking unilateral action?

That’s 100% correct. SAA seems to be consolidating its operation around Johannesburg and yet Cape Town has just won the award for the best airport in Africa and has a strong tourism proposition. A national airlift strategy has been mooted for years by national government. We need to have that debate urgently. It should include developing a strategy for all the regional airports, not just Cape Town.

Is this a major setback to Wesgro’s drive to make Cape Town the gateway to the rest of Africa?

Cape Town is becoming the launch pad for doing business on the west coast of Africa, so yes, it is a big setback in that it reduces the capacity to bring business people here. We’re engaging SAA to try to understand their arguments and to see how we can intensify destination marketing for the Western Cape to the other new markets SAA is pursuing — Brazil, Latin America, India and Argentina — in order to compensate. We are also engaging with the other airlines that fly into Cape Town to see what destination marketing we can do with them to encourage tourism.

 

 

Source: http://www.fm.co.za