World Cup: Want a cheap hotel room?
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South Africa, already reeling because of the global financial crisis, could wind up taking an even bigger bath if projections for foreign attendance at this summer’s World Cup prove true.
The month-long soccer tournament, which South Africa won the right to host in 2004, was expected to contribute as much as $11 billion to the battered economy -- with foreign tourism accounting for 16% of that figure. But less than three weeks before the June 11 opening match between Mexico and South Africa, organizers have revised their estimates for the number of World Cup visitors down to 200,000 from an original figure of 750,000. That could leave the country’s refurbished airports and cleaned-up cities empty.
As a result, airlines and hotels are slashing prices and some state-owned companies have bought thousands of unclaimed tickets -- at taxpayer expense -- to give away to employees or as prizes in hopes of filling most of the 3.2 million seats available at the 64 World Cup matches.
Tournament officials did not give reasons for revising their once-optimistic tourism goals but the poor economy worldwide, anecdotes about inflated prices in South Africa and the country’s high crime rate -- which the British newspaper The Observer said included 50 murders a day -- are likely factors. The rigid Internet-based ticketing system used by FIFA, the federation that manages international soccer as well as the World Cup, has also been blamed.
Soccer-mad Nigeria, for example, which will have a team in the tournament, had brought just 700 tickets to the World Cup as recently as two months ago, the Observer says, while FIFA says African nations outside the host country had bought just 40,000 -- not enough to fill one stadium for one match. Internet penetration is much lower in Africa than in the United States, where 80,000 World Cup tickets were purchased.
-- Kevin Baxter, reporting from London