SA Tourism’s JMAs on the chopping block

SOUTH African Tourism is
reviewing its joint marketing
agreements (JMAs) that
promote domestic tourism and some
members of the trade have expressed
concerns that the tourism body plans
to decrease funding.
Carlos Luis, supplier relationship
manager of Flight Centre Travel
Group, said Flight Centre’s marketing
contract with SA Tourism had expired
in April and that, while this year’s
contract had not been finalised yet,
the new budget would amount to only
25% of the previous year’s funding.
Carlos said the redistribution of
budget would be a blow to both Flight
Centre and domestic product sales
as South Africa ranked as one of
the group’s top three destinations in
terms of sales volumes. “This year’s
budget will specifically need to be
allocated to client-facing events and
the media campaigns that we have
previously allocated to domestic
product will now be reallocated to
promote different destinations.”
However, both Craig Parvess,
senior product manager, regional
and domestic of kulula holidays, and
John Ridler, pr and media manager
of Thompsons Holidays, said they
were unaware of a change in budget
allocation. Craig said kulula holidays
had not rolled out any joint marketing
campaigns with SA Tourism year to
date as the tour operator had been
focusing on individual campaigns with
regional tourist offices, such as Cape
Town Tourism. However it had just
entered into a new discussion with
SAT for an upcoming initiative relating
to the new Do Tourism project that
SAT launched earlier this year.
John said Thompsons Holidays had
meetings scheduled for the end of
September to discuss its upcoming
budgets.
Sisa Ntshona, ceo of SA Tourism,
said the tourism board had not
stopped signing joint marketing
agreements but was in the process
of reviewing these to ensure that
their partners were correctly aligned
to assist them in achieving their
5-in-5 strategic goal of adding five
million more tourist arrivals in the
next five years. As they aim to
source one million of those from
domestic travellers, Sisa said JMAs
were the best way to reach their
consumers. “However, not all JMAs
involve money; some are barter
deals. Part of our review includes
exploring different ways of doing
business in order for us to get the
best performance and yield the most
impact and results. We will sign
JMAs with partners that will help us
achieve this.”