Collaboration between tourism businesses more urgent than ever

Now more than ever South African small tourism businesses must work together to ensure that the post-Covid revival of the industry is sustained and reaches its full potential, says Kevan Govender, Regional Investment Manager at Business Partners Limited.

“It is understandable that business owners are mostly focused on what goes on inside their operations, because running a small business is a difficult and sometimes all-consuming undertaking,” says Kevan. “But there are certain challenges that can only be tackled as a collective, and these problems have intensified over the past few years. The case for reaching out to other tourism businesses to work together has therefore become so much stronger.”

On their own, small tourism operations cannot do much about issues such as deteriorating roads, crumbling water infrastructure and increasing crime rates – all factors that have a major and immediate impact on any small tourism operation, says Kevan. But together, a group of businesses in a certain region or sector can exert more effective pressure on the relevant authorities to solve the problems. 

Kevan urges tourism entrepreneurs to join existing regional business associations and tourism boards to add their voice to any lobbying efforts that might already be under way. And where the focus of a tourism association may still be on the traditional marketing of a region to the outside world, new members can help broaden the scope and shift the focus of such organisations to include interacting with local authorities. 

Collaboration does not always have to take place in formal structures, though. Nothing stops several businesses from spontaneously joining hands around a certain urgent issue. If an electricity substation blows in a certain area, as it happens frequently with load shedding, a collective petition or a coordinated string of calls and messages can be more effective to instil a sense of urgency in the municipality or with Eskom to fix the problem rather than random, uncoordinated responses from individual businesses. 

Coming together around such issues can lead to increased collaboration of the kind that is more traditionally found in the tourism industry, namely collective action to market a region or a sector as a desirable destination.

Again, Kevan urges small tourism operations to join existing structures that are set up to market destinations. But there is an enormous amount of micro-collaboration that tourism operations can practice among each other that will immediately benefit the participating businesses. 

The first step is for tourism entrepreneurs to consciously make the effort towards a more collaborative mindset. “It is easy for business owners to get bogged down in the inner workings of their businesses so that whole days go by without thinking about the broader environment,” says Kevan. 

When tourism entrepreneurs set aside just a small amount of regular time to lift their gaze and look around, all sorts of possibilities come into view. 

An accommodation provider that goes to the trouble of setting up an overflow-booking arrangement with one or more of their local competitors are sure to benefit from it as those establishments sooner or later refer clients back to them.

Collaboration is of course possible between different kinds of tourism businesses. An activity provider such as a tour guide can recommend a local restaurant for meals and guest house for accommodation, and the restaurant and guest house can reciprocate by suggesting the tour to their clients. 

Research shows that accommodation providers who make a concerted effort to suggest local activities and sights to their guests can increase their occupancy as some guests decide to stay a little longer. 

Such referrals and sharing of information about the tourism possibilities of the area can take the form of information leaflets and posters displayed inside a tourism establishment, as well as on web pages. But do not underestimate the importance of empowering your staff to give good answers to questions from tourists about what to do, where to stay or where to eat out. 

Suggestions can be made to prospective tourists right from the first interaction. In confirming the future booking of a visitor, a guest house staff member could suggest – in the same email – a list of activities in the area that the tourist might want to consider participating in. And the activi