(Hoedspruit) White wine in hand, Sabine Stam, installed on the almost empty terrace of a safari lodge, still can’t believe it. The tour operator should be overwhelmed in December. But Omicron decided otherwise.
Business was resuming for his company, which escaped bankruptcy in 2020. Reservations at the peak and overnight, nothing. As soon as the discovery by South African researchers of this new variant was announced, the borders closed one after the other.
As South Africa enters the southern summer, typically the busiest season for chilled tourists to the Northern Hemisphere, cancellations have followed.
The young woman hurried to organize the express repatriation of a dozen groups, already in South Africa, to Belgium and the Netherlands, the bulk of her market with the English and the Americans.
She has since struggled to convince others to postpone their trip, rather than cancel it.
“What a punch in the gut,” she told AFP. “Probably the last for quite a few boxes in the region,” she adds, referring to this wild area around Kruger Park, an unfenced immensity of 2.5 million hectares that spills over into neighboring Mozambique.
“Last year, it was easy for people to postpone, we didn’t really know where we were going. Now they are afraid to set a date ”, even hypothetical, she explains at the edge of a swimming pool which overhangs a water point where elephants, buffaloes or warthogs quench their thirst at nightfall.
Waiters in white shirts come to light candles as the sun disappears behind the mountain, casting golden light on tables set for dinner.
The Khaya Ndlovu Manor House, a rustic luxury hotel nestled in the bush, had 70% of European and American customers before the confinement. Since then, it has drastically reduced its prices to attract South Africans.
” Starting point ”
“We floated around being creative,” smiles Shannon Maclean, sales manager, who greets customers from the bar. But “we are far from full speed”.
That evening, most of the beds will remain empty. A single couple and businessmen came to visit nearby citrus farms.
The end of the year, however, inspired optimism. Reservations from abroad resumed in September. The hotel has hosted two weddings, a guest’s 40th birthday with friends from afar.
“It was so wonderful to hear these accents again, to hear stories from elsewhere,” sighs the manager. “We have the impression of having come back to square one”.
And the cancellations affect a whole chain of trades, food suppliers, taxis from the neighboring airport, guides, etc.
South Africa, the country on the continent most affected by the pandemic with nearly 3 million official cases, lived confined most of 2020 then ostracized last year at the same period, after the discovery of a previous variant.
Great Britain, the main source of visitors, up to 400,000 per year before the pandemic, had removed the country from its “red list” in early October. He handed it over the same evening when the new variant was announced.
Omicron is now present in at least 22 countries, the WHO noted on Thursday. France has resumed flights, imposing “draconian” conditions. “This is excellent news”, sighs Sabine Stam, “I hope other countries will follow.”
The variant quickly propelled a rise in cases in South Africa, raising concern among health officials who see it as the beginnings of a fourth wave before Christmas.