South Africa Holidays Will Promote Value for Money

With low prices and no time difference with the UK, cheap holidays in South Africa are set to widen their appeal.

South Africa Tourism’s new UK manager has said this week that it is her aim to make more British holidaymakers wake up to the potential for cheap holidays in her country. Speaking to travel website TTG, Lungi Morrison said that many people in the UK, including travel operators, were put off by the perception that it was costly to visit South Africa and involved a very long-haul flight.

She described such an attitude as due to “complacency” in the travel trade about South Africa, adding: “I want to focus on the country’s value for money and the benefits of it having no time difference. We want to provide the trade with as much as possible in terms of what they need to work with. We don’t want to focus on price and rather want to encourage them to look at packaging things a little differently.”

Perceptions are surely starting to change, especially after thousands of UK tourists were introduced to the concept of cheap holidays in South Africa last year during the FIFA World Cup. This event, more than anything else in the past decade, allowed ordinary people to discover for themselves the delights of South Africa’s big cities, such as bustling Johannesburg or the attractive colonial-era delights of Cape Town, as well as the splendour of its national parks and the excitement of a safari to observe lions and elephants in their natural surroundings.

South Africa holidays have been tipped as one of the big growth areas in the international travel industry next year, thanks to the large amounts spent on the country’s holiday infrastructure for the World Cup and the rising star that is South Africa’s international profile. As part of the so-called ‘BRICS’ nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – it is well placed to become even more of a firm favourite among UK travellers.