Rising prices make SA tours expensive

Rising prices make SA tours expensive

April, May and June are interesting months for Knysna. One falls out of the Easter holiday months (usually good national international mix of tourists) into the doldrums of May and June. The Oyster Festival and July holidays injects a little life into the area before it slumps into winter blues again. Those who get results in the winter period have usually doe well at targeting the corporate market and getting winter specials to the byers early.
“Year on year Knysna figures are down from last year”, reports Michael Bertram CEO of Knysna Tourism. “We feel this is partly due to SARS and the fact that the general world economy is in a slump. Last year we were selling seven nights to the UK for 499 pounds. This year the same deal is for 1399 pounds. This is expensive to what our competitors are selling to the same market.
SA Tourism is advertising a seven-night safari experience for $1999. This is also expensive compared to what our international competitors are putting into the market. We feel the combination of a general slump in world economy together with SARS and the fact that we are not a cheap destination are all contributing factors to these poorer performances.”, explained Bertram.