With five days to go before the official opening of the 8th ICC Cricket World Cup, South African Tourism has finalised preparations to ensure that the country’s reputation as a year-round, preferred tourist destination is reinforced and carried home by both fans and players visiting the country for the sporting extravaganza, the sport’s largest competition to date.
In addition to the contract it signed last year with the United Cricket Board, that will see provincial tourism vignettes featured during the TV coverage of cricket matches played in South Africa, South African Tourism also hosted international media tours to all provincial locations at the end of last year. It is also continuing to work closely with the provinces to maximise tourism opportunities during the event and, in mid-February, will launch an innovative campaign.
Forecast to attract an estimated global audience of over 1,2 billion viewers, South African Tourism’s contract with the UCB will give the country unprecedented global coverage. It allows the flighting of themed tourism vignettes during 31 of the 33 matches being played between February 8 and March 23.
One 30-second slot will be broadcast just before the start of each match, followed by three additional slots during the match. The vignettes — created to highlight each match location — will feature scripted commentary by individual broadcasters with some overplayed by music featuring renowned SA musicians, Bongo Muffin and Mandoza.
In the face of what is expected to have proved a bumper year for foreign arrivals — with statistics for the first nine months of 2002 showing a 9% increase — South African Tourism’s chief executive officer, Cheryl Carolus, comments: “To foster the continued growth and ever-increasing success of the industry, we have pulled out all the stops to capitalise on the global awareness created through events such as the ICC Cricket World Cup 2003. It gives us a supremely outstanding opportunity to attract the attention of overseas tourists, allowing us to address our commitment to increase tourist volume, spend, length of stay, to encourage geographic spread towards the overall objectives of transformation and empowerment.
“But we are not only using the event to encourage foreign travellers to our shores. We also intend — together with our tourism partners — to use this opportunity to leverage the added interest being generated in some of our lesser-visited provinces to also increase domestic tourism.”
A total of 12 venues in eight of South Africa’s nine provinces (excluding Limpopo) will host teams from 14 competing countries. Added to this are several leadup matches being played in township locations. It is forecast that CWC2003 will attract approximately 2 000 visiting journalists and about 25 000 foreign fans.
While no figures can yet be put to the overall national economic impact of hosting this event, South African Tourism will embark on post-event measurement of actual tourist spend, product use and perceptions through research conducted through its monthly departure surveys.
“The level and value of global awareness that South Africa can leverage as a result of this massive opportunity cannot be over-estimated,” concludes Carolus. “The eyes of the world will again be on South Africa and I urge each and every South African to extend their warmest welcome to our guests, showing them once more the hospitality, warmth and friendliness for which we are renowned.” – I-Net Bridge