Reading the local newspaper’s letters column over the December period has left me wondering whether some local Georgians plainly have their heads up their proverbial  collective asses.
To illustrate
Every year our local NG Moederkerk has a market. This year a lady selling fairies, pewter products and dragons, was told by the minister of the NG church, to remove her products as they could not be sold at the church market.  To date, the minister has remained silent on the issue despite a hot debate in the local paper, the organiser of the market has stressed the fact that they reserved the right to approve product and exercised this right.
Now, I have no problem with a church exercising its rights, however should such approval not be exercised prior to a stallholder going to the time and expense of erecting and displaying their wares just to be told:  “Pack it up.” Secondly I am truly baffled as to why selling such items would contradict any of the edits of the Christian belief. It seems as if even the minister in question, is also having a hard time explaining his behaviour, hence his silence. The old adage, “rather remain silent and appear a fool, than open your mouth and prove it beyond doubt” applies.
I work closely with local tourism bodies, who over the last few years have tried to create the image of George as a happening and vibrant place to visit, but this type of ultra conservative religious fervour does our tourism image no good and strongly reinforces our conservative retirement village image.
Another contributor to the letters column questioned the local municipality’s decision to remove the driftwood littering the beaches, after the recent floods, just prior to the holiday season starting. He claimed nature would have taken care of the driftwood in due course and at no cost to the ratepayer. Now what do you say to someone who does not care if thousands of holidaymakers arrive, expecting pristine beaches as displayed in the marketing materials to find instead a beach literally covered in driftwood and a sea unsafe to swim in because of drift material in the water. What would you say to someone who would rather see thousands of holiday makers in future select other destinations as they would rather avoid the risk of repeating the mistake, costing our tourism dependant economy millions, to save the proportionately miniscule cost of cleaning the beaches prior to the first holidaymakers arriving.
Perhaps said person just does not understand how competitive the tourism industry is, we vie with so many destinations that are closer, cheaper, warmer and drier. With so much negative publicity generated by the floods it is essential to ensure that visitors who choose the Garden Route, become evangelists for the Garden Route and hopefully, visit repeatedly in times to come. I assure them the average Georgian welcomes and appreciates them.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 6th, 2008 at 1:08 pm and is filed under Tourism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.