Tourism Safety Communications in South Africa

A focussed public-private partnership approach for the South African tourism industry to positively inform potential visitors on safety and security issues is imperative for the country to compete as a safe destination on the global tourism stage. Here’s the Who, What, Why and How – what’s missing is the When.

Search the web using the title of this article as keywords and you will find that the top results deliver negative advice regarding the country, primarily emanating from travel advisory websites such as…

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#CrimeStats: South Africa’s Achilles Heel

Mainstream media seldom report that the majority of the country’s crime stats are perpetrated against South Africans, with crimes against foreign tourists being relatively few and far between. The reason is that police stations do not record, and report on, crimes against tourists separately from those that are perpetrated against locals. As I pointed out in my article ‘Tourism Safety Communications in South Africa’, a focussed public-private partnership approach for the South African tourism industry to positively inform potential visitors on safety and security issues is imperative for the country to compete as a safe destination on the global tourism stage.

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Crisis Management in Tourism

When crisis strikes, there’s often little warning. In the blink of an eye, an incident such as a road accident, hijacking, kidnap, rape, assault, snake bite or life threatening illness inflicted upon your guests could thrust your business into chaos. This is especially true of the tourism industry, where service providers have a ‘legal duty of responsible care’ to their guests.

The manner in which an emergency or crisis situation is managed could well mean the difference between being found negligent in the event of a claim for financial damages being instituted against the provider or the guest taking no legal action at all for compensation.

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