Mail & Guardian reporter
Business, and particularly the tourism sector, will be a major direct beneficiary of the World Summit on Sustainable Development.
It is estimated that it will cost between R300-million and R400-million to host the event. The South African government has allocated up to R50-million of this, and the rest is to be raised internationally.
According to accounting firm Grant Thornton Kessel Feinstein, there will be a handsome return on this investment. It estimates the summit will contribute R1,6-billion to the national economy, R1-billion of which will flow directly into the Greater Johannesburg area.
The summit is expected to create more than 14 000 jobs for South Africa. These include 11 000 jobs at the summit itself, 800 jobs in related events, and 1 600 jobs attributable to expenditure in pre- and post-tours.
It is expected that 39% of 19 400 international delegates will take a pre- or post-conference trip, on average 3,3 days long. Based on that assumption, the firm estimates that these tourists will spend R69-million, right across South Africa.
In addition, the direct and indirect promotional spin-offs for South Africa from massive international media coverage and word-of-mouth marketing by tens of thousands of people returning from here to every corner of the globe are probably immeasurable in financial terms.
Says Moss Mashishi, CEO of the Johannesburg World Summit Company: “In my previous role as CEO of South African Tourism, it became quite apparent that the challenge of marketing South Africa was not in the innate nature of our tourism product. What we have to confront is the internationally pervasive Afro-pessimism, or Afro-ignorance, that blinds the international tourist market to a jewel of a destination.
“The summit provides us with a unique opportunity to substantially negate this prejudice and get the attending delegates and the world at large to sit back and say ‘Wow!'”