OVERVIEW Transport and
OVERVIEW Transport and logistics A regional airport could become an international hub. SECTOR INSIGHT The City of Cape Town wants to revive rail. There are plans to make more use of Hoedspruit Airport, the airport that is most often associated with the Orpen Gate of the Kruger National Park. In 2022, 61 000 of the people who passed through Hoedspruit were European tourists but there is potential to increase this traffic substantially. CemAir offers flights to Johannesburg and Cape Town and Airlink connects to destinations such as the Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, Maun in Botswana and Vilanculo in Mozambique. The Limpopo Department of Transport and Community Safety is working on a strategy to develop the airport to further boost the tourism sector. The Polokwane International Airport (PIA) is wholly owned by the provincial government and run by the Gateway Airports Authority Ltd (GAAL), an agency of the Department and Transport. It has the potential to be an important regional cargo airport. In the Western Cape, the administrations in charge of the City of Cape Town and the province have plans to better coordinate transport. The City of Cape Town conducted a feasibility study in 2022 on taking over the management of passenger rail services from PRASA. The city wants to have a fully-integrated system, which would include rail. In 2022 the city’s Urban Mobility Directorate published an updated Comprehensive Integrated Transport Plan (CITP), outlining the strategies and plans for improving the transport environment in the metropole for five years to 2028. The Transport and Urban Development Authority (TDA), located within the municipality, is responsible for planning, costing, contracting, regulating, monitoring, evaluating, communicating, managing and maintaining the City of Cape Town’s transport infrastructure, systems, operations, facilities and network. The provincial government is following the city’s ONLINE RESOURCES African Rail Infrastructure Association (ARIA): www.aria.org.za Airlines Association of Southern Africa: www.aasa.za.net South African Heavy Haul Association: www.saheavyhaul.co.za lead with the establishment of a Mobility Department. Large amounts of money are to be spent on various forms of public transport in the short term. Investments in rapid transit systems in the big metropolitan areas are being followed by cities such as Polokwane and Rustenburg. In Limpopo’s provincial capital of Polokwane, operations of the Leeto La Polokwane public transport system were launched in 2021. The South African Department of Transport has several agencies and businesses reporting to it. Among them are Air Traffic and Navigation Services Company, Airports Company South Africa (ACSA), National Transport Information System, Road Accident Fund, South African Civil Aviation Authority, South African Maritime Safety Authority (SAMSA), South African National Roads Agency Limited (SANRAL) and Passenger Rail Agency of SA (PRASA). South Africa has 22 000km of railway lines and 747 000km of roads, 325 019 heavy-load vehicles and the road freight industry employs 65 000 drivers. There are 135 licensed airports in the country, 10 of which have international status. ■ SOUTH AFRICAN BUSINESS 2024 46 PHOTO: Airlink
Tourism New hotels are being built. OVERVIEW SECTOR INSIGHT A Green Tourism Incentive Programme is available. The Industrial Development Corporation, one of South Africa’s biggest institutional investors, is active in the tourism sector. Among its products is the Green Tourism Incentive Programme, which incentivises privately owned tourism companies to move towards using renewable energy and efficient water utilisation. It also supports local economic development, such as initiatives in Limpopo to develop new hotels in the Musina area. The northern parts of that province are experiencing a boom in business tourism due to an uptick in mining operations. Elsewhere in the Vhembe District Municipality, the African Century Group is building a four-star Premier Hotel at Thohoyandou and the team behind the venture expects to fill its 120 rooms. A similar trend can be seen in the Northern Cape, where the Country Hotels group has developed a three-tier offering covering most of the province, spurred in part by the rapid rise of the renewable energy sector in that province. In Durban, the Radisson Blu Hotel in Umhlanga (pictured), shortly after celebrating its one-year anniversary in July 2023, received two awards from Durban Tourism, the Visitor Experience and Restaurants Award as well as the Meetings, Exhibitions and Special Events (MESE) Award. Premier Hotels & Resorts has two new properties in Umhlanga and recently restored its Cutty Sark property, further down the coast in Scottburgh. Turkish Airlines returned to King Shaka International Airport in 2022. Two of the airline’s Istanbul-Johannesburg flights now extend to Durban on Thursdays and Saturdays and it has plans to increase these to four weekly flights. A new direct flight from Durban to Harare in Zimbabwe ONLINE RESOURCES African Business Travel Association: www.abta.co.za South African National Parks: www.sanparks.co.za South African Tourism: www.southafrica.net was launched by Airlink in April 2022. These new flights are in addition to Emirates flying five flights a week from Durban directly to Dubai and the fourweekly direct flights that Qatar Airways offers. South African National Parks (SANParks), which runs nearly 70% of South Africa’s 509 state and protected areas, has a number of public-private partnerships and held an investment summit in 2022 to showcase a further 100 opportunities in 12 national parks. There are currently 60 PPPs in operation in South Africa. Sun City announced in October 2022 that it would spend about R1.1-billion on projects at its Sun City Resort. The R295-million Lefika Villas development will see 58 threeand four-bedroom villas added to the resort’s accommodation options for members of Sun International’s Sun Vacation Club. The Palace will gain a spa and a gymnasium and 320 bedrooms are to be refurbished. There are 711 745 people employed in the tourism industry nationally, with road transport (29%), food and beverages (20%) and accommodation (19%) absorbing the largest numbers. The sector contributes 9% to South Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP). ■ PHOTO: Radisson Blu 47 SOUTH AFRICAN BUSINESS 2024
