Durban’s premier tourist destination, uMhlanga, “experienced a boom” this festive season as tourists flocked to the area despite heavy rains that lashed most parts of the province from Christmas Day.
Some hotels in the area reached 100% occupancy while guest houses stood close to 90% in occupancy levels.
According to the information released by eThekwini Municipality shortly before New Year’s celebrations, hotel occupancy was above 60% and there were many well-attended tourism-related events.
While tourism recorded a boom, parts of the province also experienced heavy rains and flooding that left people dead or missing. Rains were experienced in many parts of the province for the majority of the key holidays this festive break.
However, tourism experts said the bad weather had minimal impact on the industry based on the recorded numbers.
Duncan Heafield, chairman of uMhlanga Tourism Association, said the festive season was an extremely profitable period for tourist-related businesses in the area, and the performance, boosted by the municipality’s ability to keep the beaches open throughout the festive season, augured well for the industry going forward.
“Hotels in greater uMhlanga showed a 96% -100% occupancy and guest houses a 89% occupancy. Over 1 500 cars an hour were coming into Durban through the toll roads on Friday before the weekend.
“The municipality’s ability to keep the beaches open and working hard in keeping our visitor areas clean and safe was a good sign that tourism is on the increase and it augurs well for 2024.
“Most of the restaurants were traditionally closed on New Year’s Day and those that were open had well-patronised establishments. It’s traditionally a day for family and friends to be together and certainly this was the case,” Heafield said.
Brett Tungay, East Coast chairperson of the Federated Hospitality Association of South Africa (Fedhasa), said the season has been “ok” although the bad weather did have an impact on tourism.
“The rain does put a damper on tourism, especially on activity providers, their numbers come down with this kind of weather but then restaurants will start to do better because people still want to do something,
“In general, the season has been okay, we have seen an increase in numbers from last year December (2022), and hope we will see more growth. If the municipality can sort out the waste water issue that would really be awesome,” he said.
The bad weather which claimed more than 10 lives just before Christmas also continued into the New Year’s weekend with the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs stating that it had received reports of extensive damage caused by heavy rains in Ilembe and uMgungundlovu districts.
This led to one confirmed fatality in Mandeni and three people being reported missing after their vehicle was swept away in the Msunduzi River in Pietermaritzburg.
The Mercury