South Africa may struggle to host the 2010 Soccer World Cup because of the current power cuts, the South African Tourism Services Association (Satsa) said on Wednesday.
”We are hoping to have more than 300 000 visitors, all using electricity. The stadiums may have all the most wonderful generators in the world to broadcast the games, but will people come to South Africa to see them if they know they will be going back to hotels and guest houses with no power?” asked Satsa CEO Michael Tatalias.
He said major building projects for 2010 were on tight deadlines and needed huge amounts of power to run.
”The building work on the stadiums is also going to be widely disrupted. We have to ask ourselves honestly if we can still do this.”
Tatalias said the power cuts could destroy the country’s tourism industry completely.
”The industry will take a huge financial knock this year. So far little attention has been paid to the effects of continuing power [failures] on the tourism industry. And it will be badly affected.”
He said more had to be done to protect smaller businesses, the backbone of the country’s tourism industry.
Tatalias said the provision of reliable information from Eskom could help.
”With reliable information we can develop workable solutions. We can probably make a plan to get around the hassles, but it’s going to cost. And cost is the key driver in tourism these days,” he said. — Sapa