Is South Africa’s hotel industry ready for next year’s World Cup onslaught? EWAN CAMERON, Managing Director of the Johannesburg-based AFRICAN SUN group shares with us a critical assessment of the pros and cons.

2010 is South Africa’s biggest opportunity to prove to the world just how far its hotel industry and wider tourism offer has moved since the dark days of apartheid ; economic sanctions were removed as recently as 1989. The year Nelson Mandela was released, 1990, South Africa received less than 1 million visitors, in the subsequent years South Africa’s arrivals have grown to over 9.5 million last year, yet still less than Egypt, with almost 12 m, and far behind Italy which boasts 39 million arrivals.

About The HOTEL yearbook (HYB)

The Hotel Yearbook is a family of publications that call upon a wide-ranging group of senior executives, analysts, consultants and opinion leaders from all over the world to ask, "What lies ahead for the global hotel industry?" In The Hotel Yearbook - whether it is the highly respected annual edition or any of the special editions focusing on such critically important themes as technology, talent development, or the digital world - our forward-looking contributors share with readers the key trends and developments that they believe could have an impact on the performance of the hotel industry in the future. For more information visit hotelyearbook.com.

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