Conditions in the tourism industry are improving, according to the latest results from the TBCSA FNB Tourism Business Index (TBI) for the first quarter of 2013. But, now that business is showing signs of recovery, is it a reason for lodges to increase their prices?
Tourism Update received an anonymous comment from a reader expressing concern that game lodges were implementing price increases during low season and at a time when costs were constantly rising.
“It’s fantastic that business is slowly recovering again but what I find disheartening is the lodges that are implementing price increases - not only from November but during our low season. Not sure if I am the only tour operator who is a bit disgruntled about this and whilst I do appreciate that costs have gone up, like electricity, fuel etc. the irony is that had this season not been as good then no one would have increased rates,” said the comment.
When asked if he had a similar experience, Chris Duxbury from Wildlife Safaris told TU he hadn’t seen increases for this year with the mid-range lodges the company uses.
Nicci Lenferna de la Motta, Director of Pulse Africa agreed with Duxbury and said none of the lodges the company dealt with were starting to hike their prices now that business was recovering.
“As far as we are concerned, a number of lodges froze their rates for a couple of years and the current price increases are in line with the increases we experienced prior to that i.e. between 5% and 10%.”
Onne Vegter from Wild Wings Safaris also said he had not noticed any unreasonable price increases from the suppliers the company worked with.
“A number of lodges kept their rates unchanged last year, which certainly helped the industry during the recession. However, one cannot keep rates unchanged for several years in a row, without cutting expenses somewhere,” he said.
“Costs have increased again, we have seen significant fuel price hikes in the last year, and we expect most lodges to adjust their rates in line with inflation as they usually do,” he continued.
Vegter said a number of lodges and marketing agents had engaged very constructively with the trade to get input and feedback before setting their new rates, something he said they really appreciated.
He added that he did not anticipate any adverse effect on potential business, because the increases had been very reasonable.
Despite this, Lenferna de la Motta said Pulse Africa felt that many of the game lodges were overpriced in the first place. “Another concern is the tipping policy of many of the game lodges. It seems to have become the norm for a lodge to recommend anything between R450 and R1000 per room as standard tipping policy.”
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