Brief Description

In southern Africa, 2004 will be remembered for the Republic of South Africa’s (RSA) win of the bid to host the soccer world cup in 2010. The announcement that made RSA the host nation for one of the biggest events in the world was a result of a bid made strong by the commitment to make 2010 an “African” world cup. The expected numbers of soccer fans, believed to be approximately 500,000 (overseas and African) provide a sizeable audience and opportunities for raising awareness about regional tourism products whose benefits will go beyond the event.

The location of Lesotho in relation to South Africa provides it with a unique opportunity to benefit from the 2010 soccer event. Completely surrounded by South Africa, Lesotho is within a short flight/drive from three of the host cities. Bloemfontein is a mere 1.5 hours drive away from Maseru the capital city. Johannesburg can be reached by 1 hour flight or 4.5 hour drive, while Durban can be reached by a 6 hour drive from Maseru.

However, there are infrastructural constraints as access by air is limited and not competitively priced and although Lesotho is linked to RSA by road, access is hampered by cumbersome border control procedures that can result in long waiting times to enter Lesotho. Other constraints that hamper tourism growth include limited skills levels in tourism related fields which negatively impact on service standards and incomplete tourism infrastructure which is hindering the design of user friendly tourism routes in the country. This all is affecting the competitiveness of Lesotho as a tourism destination.

In striving to capitalize on 2010 opportunities, the Lesotho Tourism Development Cooperation (LTDC) has developed a Lesotho 2010 Tourism Strategy which outlines how the country foresees removing some of the barriers impeding a prosperous tourism industry. The Strategy identifies a number of initiatives that could augment and improve the “Tourism Supply” and has also looked at identifying concrete actions to stimulate “Tourism Demand”. Key challenges that remain are 1) to determine the viability of the supply activities in light of 2010 and beyond as well as to 2) implementation challenges in terms of funding and capacity to manage such a large undertaking.
 

UNDP's support will be targeted to promote economic empowerment of the poor through the development of micro-enterprises in the Tourism industry (e.g. home-stay programme empowering women in rural areas).
 

Contact:

Ms. Lineo Mdee
lineo.mdee@undp.org