Don’t say that RT, imagine how many could lose their jobsRobertT wrote:The day visitors are quite important as well, SANParks are probably making the same margin p/p or close to on a day visitor to an overnight visitor if you take the infrastructure costs, staff required (shops, petrol, laundry,restaurants,cleaning, managers as well as HO, booking staff, website), maintenance, insurances etc etc. The wild card gets paid in advance and earns an interest and some people only just cover the cost of the card. Day visitors also spend money in restaurants, shops so they help cover costs of these places.
Seriously though, I would love to know the exact figures, but if one can trust RP’s maths the answer is there
If the days visitors accounted for 25% of the number of people, then they would add max 25% to the revenue if their earning potential equates to an overnight visitors as you state, which I have my doubts about; they still then also add 25% to the traffic volume, so if their numbers were cut in half and the price was doubled, then SANParks still makes the same money, but improve the traffic volume by 12.5%. (They also increase the financial benefit of staying in KNP, so could operate at higher occupancy)Richprins wrote: 1916250 over 365 days...take 20 %...conservatively, gives Around 400 000 tourists over and above overnighters...
So day visitors can make up over a quarter of those in the Park if we take Kruger's 1 400 000 bed nights confirmed for 2013?
They certainly can’t decrease the numbers booking camps; imagine the outcry and the jobs that would be lost, so if I had to answer for jobs, turnover and congestion, I would take the obvious choice.
The first problem is, nobody is holding SANParks accountable for this congestion, hence the importance of this vid from Brat
The second problem is that SANParks aren't acknowledging there's a problem, which makes the distribution of this vid important