Earlier this month, South Africa Tourism CEO Sisa Ntshona was in New York to talk to the travel trade and media about the water crisis in Cape Town in an effort to answer questions about what travelers should expect on the ground. Travel Weekly's Michelle Baran spoke with him on the phone to get his insights.
Q: What is the current situation in Cape Town regarding the severe drought and water restrictions in place there?
Sisa Ntshona
A: Yes, indeed Cape Town is suffering a drought, a water crisis. Key to note that climate change is not just a South African phenomenon, it's a global phenomenon. We've seen world-class cities around the world that have also suffered water restrictions: Beijing, Sao Paolo, Abu Dhabi, even Los Angeles to a certain extent. However, now Cape Town is literally in the eye of the storm, and the world is looking to Cape Town and South Africa in terms of setting the new norm as to how world-class tourism destinations respond to water crisis issues.
Q: What is the significance of Day Zero?
A: Day Zero is really misunderstood. Many people see it as an Armageddon. To give you context, Day Zero was a domestic awareness campaign to change the behavior of Capetonians and their relationship with water. Basically what it means is, if we don't decrease our daily consumption of water, we will get to a trigger point ... more severe water restrictions come into place. We've already seen the impact of this [campaign]. If you compare the daily consumption, what it is now versus a year ago, it is down by 50%. We want to reduce that even more. When we reduce the water consumption, we actually push out the Day Zero date even further into the rainy season. The rainy season is May, June, July, August; we will have some sort of respite when the rains come through. We are at all costs trying to avoid Day Zero. It is literally Plan Z. Plan A is to make sure that we don't get into that space.
Q: Don't tourists put additional burden on Cape Town's water supply?
A: We get a lot of questions, especially now, from tourists, 'Should we still travel to South Africa in light of the water crisis? Will we not be doing more harm than good?' The consistent and simple answer to that is yes, we still want the tourists to travel to Cape Town. However, they must just be aware of the water crisis issue and adhere to some of the restrictions that are there. Some of the restrictions are showers. As an example, guidelines are that they must be kept to 90 seconds ... In fact, it would be irresponsible for us to say we don't want you to come to Cape Town, because 300,000 jobs are actually sustained and supported by tourists.
Q: What are hotels and restaurants doing to conserve water?
A: One of the big coffee chains, the Starbucks equivalent let's say, has now moved away from using ceramic cups and is using paper cups, so they don't have to wash the cups and don't use water. You are seeing some of the major hotel chains taking themselves off the grid and investing in their own desalination plants and water harvesting. We've seen some great innovation with showerheads that actually deliver the same pressure but use less water.
Q: How important is Cape Town to the overall South Africa itinerary?
A: Cape Town is iconic. It's very important. It's also the gateway many times to the rest of the country.
Q: How much has the water shortage impacted travel to South Africa?
A: For 2017, not at all. We're up. I'm concerned about the first quarter of 2018. At the moment, we just don't have the figures, but more anecdotal evidence, which is really people saying there are so many inquiries coming through about whether people should continue [with their travels to South Africa].