By Chinelo Obogo, [email protected]
For quite some time, obtaining a South African visa has been an Herculean task for many Nigerians. Even though the country’s visa application website states that it takes not less than 15 days for a visitor’s visa to be processed, many Nigerians said they have waited for as long as eight months before getting theirs. It is due to this challenge that Nigeria’s largest carrier, Air Peace, had to suspend its South Africa operations as many Nigerians found it very difficult to get visas.
According to Susan Akporiaye, president of the National Association of Nigeria Travel Agencies (NANTA), the umbrella body of all travel agencies operating in Nigeria, bottlenecks such as this make it difficult for tourism to thrive, while revealing that South Africa is not the only African country with such bottlenecks.
Akporiaye said that in addition to deliberating on the African tourism potential, the difficulty in getting visas are some of the issues that would be tackled at the Africa Tourism Conference, powered by NANTA and organised in partnership with the Tour Operators Union of Ghana slated for South Africa.
Visa application bottlenecks
Some of my colleagues in South Africa are not happy with the way their visas are being run in Nigeria because it is not good business for them. I have a group of 30 that intended to travel to South Africa and my colleague over there was upset because of the money she lost since the business didn’t happen. The issue of visa is a diplomatic one and the travel practitioners are always engaging their government because they know that it is a problem.
The South African Tourism Associations are concerned about the visa issues because their job is to promote their country as a destination and they can’t do it if the visa is still too difficult to get. However, we have continued engaging with the South African government and that is why they came up with the electronic visa to ease the process. The new method at the moment is that you don’t need to drop your passport at the embassy, it is upon approval that you would be called to bring your passport. It is a gradual process. This problem is not just peculiar to South Africa, it is also very difficult to get visas from some other African countries. So part of what this conference aims to do, is to bring down these borders.
To address some of these issues, two industry associations, NANTA and TOUGHA endorsed by South Africa Tourism (SAT), will for the first time in Africa, host a hybrid multi-layer tourism industry conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, in May, 2023. This conference is geared towards easing some of the difficulties our countries are facing and to sell Africa as a tourist destination. The minister of tourism of South Africa and their top immigration officers would be there.
Both bodies assembled the best faculty from the University of Johannesburg on tourism enterprise and related businesses, to help define and determine the immediate and future drive of the industry, its profitability, and challenges. This unique conference, which will be certificated, is open to individuals, organisations, and agencies in Nigeria and Ghana, particularly those with eyes on impacting positively on the growth and sustainability of the various value chains in the African cultural tourism economy.
We would also be having our 47th Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Abuja, April 25th to 27th 2023, and, as usual, we will use the opportunity to learn from experts about areas of our business that must be addressed and improved upon. No doubt, the travel world is incredibly interesting but there are also areas of concern; such as trapped funds, monopoly, unfair practices, border and visa issues and whole lot of emerging complexities. We would have the Executive Vice Chairman of FCCPC (Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission) speak to us, not only on how we can confidentially protect our businesses and clients, but also on how to navigate challenges of foreign airlines trapped funds and its impacts on our businesses.
Xenophobia in South Africa
Most times, things are not the way it seems until you start investigating. If there is unrest in a particular place, it is not a reflection of the country.
In tourism, we see each other as one because for us to survive, we need each other. In every crisis, we chose to sell a different story. There are always two sides to every story, so it is important to get to the root of every matter. I was in South Africa when the xenophobic attacks started and it was not exactly how it seemed. We went to the market there were many stories; one side said Nigerians caused it and another said South Africans caused it, which is why it is always important to get to the root of a matter.
We are selling tourism and that is what we want to use to change the narrative. Just like people talk badly about Nigeria and I have to do a lot of work to convince them that what they are hearing is not the way it is, is the same way that people talk of South Africa.
This conference is powered by NANTA, it is out vision and the purpose is to promote Africa. We must unite and if we are going to use tourism to bring unity, then I am ready to do it. There are walls hindering progress in Africa and this conference may lead to the breaking down of such walls. We have over 400 travel professionals from Ghana and Nigeria going for this conference. It was discussed in our AGM in Kano and as at that time, there was no destination we had in mind. It was the South Africa Tourism Board that approached us and offered to host the maiden edition and they have a hosting right for three years. Zimbabwe and Zambia are waiting in line to host.
Trapped funds
Akporiaye revealed that some foreign airlines have started opening up their lower inventories for sales since the last meeting the Minister of Aviation and the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, FCCPC had with foreign airlines and NANTA.
She said, payment of foreign airlines trapped funds is still ongoing but not in the volume that is expected by the airlines.
“There is no 100% halt, for instance, somebody’s expecting hundred thousand and he is getting ten thousand, its going on in tiny trickles. When we had a meeting with the minister he never actually told us some people where given preferential treatment, No, all of them are all in the situation in which is just in bits and pieces, the window is still open for them to do their normal two- two Weeks bidding by what comes in is very insignificant,” she said.
