BIDTRAVEL: Traveller Confidence and Demand Continue to Skyrocket

A proudly Bidvest company, BidTravel, through its 11 companies, provides industry-leading travel management services to corporate businesses and leisure travellers through an extensive local, regional, international, and online network.

The return of Chinese tourists to Africa combined with a full resumption of operations on international routes by African airlines are the latest indicators of a rebounding tourism industry decimated by the Covid-19 pandemic two years ago. In February China picked three African countries—Egypt, Kenya, and South Africa—among 20 across the globe for piloting outbound group tours, with the United Nations World Travel Organisation’s latest World Tourism Barometer confirming that would push Africa’s international arrival numbers back to 2019 levels.

“We are upbeat as all indications are that our tourism sector is on a fast highway to recovery,” was the take of South Africa’s Tourism Minister, Lindiwe Sisulu as the country’s arrivals from January to October 2022 were recorded at 4.5 million, with the international tourism boom looking even brighter in 2023 due to the resumption of entire operations and re-introduction of higher capacity aircraft on African routes.

BUOYANT RETURN

“Things are going well, and we have certainly seen travellers returning in their droves,” agrees BidTravel CEO Lidia de Olim Folli. “South Africa came off most countries’ lists in around late April or early May22, after which things absolutely skyrocketed. The consequence of this, though, was that airports internationally were unable to handle all such a sudden increase and this severely dented our ability to return to a pre-Covid normal.

“It has been extremely buoyant, however, to the extent that capacity has been available. We have found that our premium cabins have been the first to sell out, interestingly, with economy class seats remaining, and this was very pleasing to see.”

De Olim Folli puts this rush, and desire for a more luxurious experience, down to the sheer exhaustion universally felt from the endless online calls and meetings of the epoch and the abject removal of face-to-face interaction, causing people to dash back at the first opportunity to begin to reclaim some semblance of normality.

“Both domestically and internationally, air capacity and flight availability were still down at the end of 2022 compared to the 2019 numbers,” she qualifies. “But we have nonetheless seen a good return and increase in travellers with the removal of lockdowns and air travel returning. One of our local airlines, which accounted for around 30% of the entire seat capacity in South Africa, fell into liquidation last June, and while some competitors did start adding capacity it was not until later, in October or November, so we do not have a like-for-like picture domestically.

“Realistically, though, we have recovered to a point we would be happy to have reached had we been at maximum capacity throughout.

“We are now back in a position where we can begin to look at exploring areas in which we do not currently operate in the travel environment – perhaps by way of an acquisition,” de Olim Folli outlines of Bidvest’s imminent intentions for its travel arm. “I cannot say that I have identified anything concrete as yet, but at least we do have the scope now that the industry has come back, and there will be opportunities out there.

“When we do decide to grow in a certain sphere of travel there is now access to these new environments.”

LESSONS LEARNED

This contrasts markedly with the approach of just last year, which was very much concerned with hunkering down and building up the defences to protect the various facets of the business. “We were very much focussed solely on our own internal recovery,” de Olim Folli stipulates, “and now that we can see that everything has opened up around us we are keeping our eyes and ears open to what is out there in the near future.”

There have been valuable lessons learned from the turmoil of recent years, de Olim Folli shares. “For the last two years we have zeroed in on how to trim down,” she explains, “but our takeaway from having volumes increase again as quickly as they did is the realisation that in order to grow really quickly, there are a number of moving parts to be aware of.

“It is imperative to ensure that not only are we scaling up those operating on the front end, such as revenue generators and travel experts, but that every aspect of the business receives similar attention in order to support them – increasing administrative, IT and HR resources, for example, to ensure that we meet clients’ expectations based on their historic experiences with us. It takes much longer, and far more resources, to onboard people en-masse, and we feel much richer in a business practice sense for having learned the valuable lessons that have come from these situations and circumstances.”

As the hospitality sector in its entirety has regained its popularity and, subsequently, familiarly chaotic nature, holes are being uncovered where senior, skilled individuals have been forced to move out of the industry and source alternative forms of employment when the world shut down. “It has been difficult to recruit everybody back,” de Olim Folli admits, “and those that had worked in the industry for a long time possibly felt slightly burnt because we had to shut down so quickly. They have then had experience in other sectors where they were able to then chose direction.”

It has lent to the upskilling and training of people, highlighted by de Olim Folli as critical when speaking with Enterprise Africa last year, a whole new level of importance. “We recognise that we are simply never going to claw back some of that skill,” she accepts, “but we are continuing to invest strongly internally in order to upskill and ameliorate our personnel.”

Tourism has long been known to be a key part of the South African economy, and all of BidTravel’s many constituent parts are thriving and performing strongly on the bounce back of the last year, de Olim Folli concludes.

“As economic pressures back home ease, in significant markets for us like the EU and the UK, and the likes of China continue to open up, it can only help us to welcome tourists back to southern Africa and make the world accessible again to South Africans.”