*Update: This article was updated on 1 June 2020 to include new regulations on accommodation.
Sure Travel CEO Vanya Lessing has welcomed the announcement that domestic business travel will be allowed to resume when South Africa moves to lockdown level 3 regulations on 1 June 2020, but cautions that there is still important information needed before any corks can be popped.
“It’s great, but more clarity is required about the standards of hygiene and safety that have to be applied,” she says. “More specifically, which professional body is going to set the standards. This will impact the decisions that airlines, hotels and other operators have to make about the financial viability of operating.”
The only information formally released before 1 June was that business travel will be phased in under level 3 on “dates to be announced”.
While this is news welcomed by the local travel industry, it remains to be seen whether domestic carriers would even resume flights as operating at low passenger capacities would further erode the profitability of already-struggling airlines.
kulula.com and British Airways’ parent company Comair, which is under business rescue, has indicated it will not resume scheduled services before November.
SAA is in a similar position, while FlySafair told IOL Travel it would not make financial sense to operate with reduced passenger loads under level 3.
Accommodation services such as hotels, B&Bs and guest lodges are now allowed to open but only for business travellers, according to a 30 May press briefing by Tourism Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane. Conferences and large meetings, however, are still out of bounds. “We do note that in terms of conference facilities such as the ICC, some of them have been converted to assist in the fight against COVID-19 and those who are providing facilities for social relief platforms such as distribution of food parcels, those facilities are allowed to continue with the work in the fight against COVID-19,” Kubayi-Ngubane said.
Meanwhile, South Africans wishing to travel abroad for very specific reasons have been given the green light to do so. Read more here.