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At least one company in the tourism and hospitality sector is "delighted" by the amount of business it is getting from the World Cup.
Travel and tourism conglomerate Tourvest made a deliberate decision to concentrate on the corporate market in preference to family visitors and individual fans.
Chief executive Tommy Edmond said yesterday he was "delighted" by the response. Tourvest had made the bookings and other arrangements for senior business executives from all over the world, who were coming as the guests of companies that were sponsors of the World Cup.
He would not give details, as, he said, the information would benefit competitors.
He said there was no possibility of the business being cancelled, as had happened to some companies that reserved accommodation and transport facilities for Match, the official accommodation agents for Fifa, because Tourvest would in any case receive payment for its services.
Martin Wiest, the chief executive of Tourvest's inbound travel division, said the arrangements had been made with eight World Cup sponsors including Coca-cola, and with other commercial companies "across the board, mostly suppliers", to host a total of about 60 000 corporate guests during the tournament.
Some would stay in five-star hotels, but many in four-star hotels, for an average of three days. All Tourvest's visitors were in the main cities, 70 percent in Johannesburg.
About 20 percent would stay in Cape Town, and the remaining 10 percent "on the periphery", in Bloemfontein and Port Elizabeth.
Tourvest had arranged for them to go on sightseeing tours between matches.
"But to our surprise most of them did not want to see other parts of the country, but to go on half-day tours in the vicinity of the cities where they were staying.
Discussing whether visitors would get value for money during the World Cup, Wiest said this was relative.
"If you are talking about value for money on a visit to a city hosting a the World Cup, anywhere in the world, the answer is yes. But if you are comparing prices with those on a normal holiday visit at other times the answer is no.
"But at the end of the day, the real value to the country will not be the visitors' spend while the World Cup is on, but the exposure that will benefit our tourism industry in the longer term."
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