‘Unsustainable for SA tourism to keep being locked down’ - FEDHASA
The Federated Hospitality Association of Southern Africa (FEDHASA) says
the continuous lockdowns are not sustainable for the tourism sector.
These comments come after the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) announced the emergence of the new B.1.1.529 Covid-19 variant in the country on Thursday.
As the country enters it’s 610th day of lockdown, the announcement was then followed with multiple travel bans from countries including Italy, Singapore and the European Union on Friday.
“We really devastated that this has happened and we just hopeful that the UK’s precautionary measures will be short lived and scientists will unpack something which actually shows the variant isn’t worse than the current variant,” says FEDHASA’s Rosemary Anderson.
She says local tourism has boosted the sector, but continuous lockdowns are unsustainable.
“We really hope local tourists will keep on supporting domestic tourism, as that’s the only thing that actually kept us going in the past 20 months.
“Also we urge everyone to vaccinated and practice safe protocols, because it is not sustainable for our country to keep on being lock down and having hospitality and tourism under really strong rules which make financially unviable to be in business in this sector.”
She adds that the sector has countless of jobs on the line and ways need to be found to mitigate the negative impact the ban may have.
“Our sector generated about 1.5million direct and indirect jobs. This will have a direct impact on businesses in our hospitality and tourism sector. We really hope to have a way forward where we can mitigate against the dramatic negative effect.”
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