According to a Cape Town-based tourism expert Peter Koblmiller, who is also editor of the German tourist magazine Kapstadt.com, the figures our officials proudly trot out showing large numbers of tourists coming into the country do not present anything like the true picture. In an exclusive interview with the Weekend Argus last week, Koblmiller said that the figure of nine million tourists often includes those people from neighbouring territories bailing across our border looking for work. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't reckon they are coming into SA with bulging wallets and credit cards just aching to be maxed out. They are broke and contribute nothing to tourism - apart from the few who might get a job in the hospitality industry, for example. In real terms, the numbers of the big spenders from Europe - Germany, the Netherlands etc - are declining; after all, who wants to go to a country where you stand a better than average chance of being mugged, or worse? About 260,000 Germans visited South Africa in 2003, but that fell to about 160,000 in 2005. Tourists vote with their feet, and they talk, and they spend their dollars and deutschmarks elsewhere, and our tourism industry suffers - as do the retailers who would otherwise have Kurt unt Heidi coming in to buy items, and restaurants that would otherwise have them buying a meal... The loss is huge and unless something is done... really done, to sort out the crime problem, tourism figures will continue to drop and the losses will grow - and jobs could be lost.


Rod Baker, Content Manager