Population growth in Africa and its effect on the marketplace is discussed in this TV show by Grant Thornton's Gillian Saunders.

Africa’s burgeoning population and economic growth

It’s something like six of the top ten or five of the top ten GDP growth countries are African countries at the moment.  We’ve seen a transition to democracy. The resources on this continent in terms of the oil and gas reserves that we’re coming across now and all the minerals that we already have.  We know there’s a lot of opportunity to feed the world and the resources going forward into the future. We have growing populations and young populations. We’ve got the labour force and with that coming the growing middle class with the spending power and the consumer society developing. You’re starting to see a country like South Africa, obviously already and Nigeria and key countries like Kenya in East Africa having a big consumer market and the services and the consumer goods that go with that, there is just growth on this continent. ______________________________________________________________ If you enjoyed this video about population growth in Africa why not watch more TV shows on The Hospitality Channel?

Big hotel brands are just starting to enter the African market as Gillian Saunders discusses in this TV show.

The presence of big hotel brands in Africa

The brand footprint in Africa is very small, I think it’s around 14% compared to many other continents, it’s more like 40 to 70%. There’s a lot of unbranded independent properties on the continent. Slowly what’s happened, the big brands have come in at the upper level, four star and five star level, where I think they were right. That’s where the market first was. That’s what the traveller wanted because they wanted to be able to trust the fact that there was a product that had electricity and water and could give them what they expected. So the big brands are in at the upper market level but still not as much as they are. There are some major cities in Africa without a branded hotel there at all. Then in the middle market we just have no brands in Africa, there’s very few of the budget or mid-market chains, for instance, at the moment India has a myriad of mid-market chains interested in moving into that Continent or Sub-Continent. But luckily it’s one administration in one country. It’s probably easier to target than 58 odd countries in this continent. There’s no real movement there yet, but we’re starting to hear about interest in that and people thinking maybe they can take an international budget brand and they might have to tweak it to make it an African budget brand, because there’s slightly different needs here. But there must be a mid-market gap at the moment I think for chains and brands to get into this continent, and to serve the intraregional market, you know, Africans travelling within Africa. As the continent’s economy grows the B2B within the continent’s going to grow and need a more middle market product. ______________________________________________________________________ If you enjoyed this video about sustainable design why not watch more TV shows on The Hospitality Channel?

The African government can help build the right infrastructure for the hospitality industry to grow as Grant Thornton's  Gillian Saunders discusses in this TV show.

African government and hospitality

They can do more to assist them through all sorts of things, from tax dispensations, through importing furniture and equipment which can sometimes be a total trial, property rights and zoning and processes for environmental impacts and zoning assessments.  Try to get some sort of consistency. There’s also the marketing, destination marketing’s pretty non-existent, pretty weak as a general rule. Then there’s, you know, what every industry needs is infrastructure. The continent won’t develop without the infrastructure. Infrastructure doesn’t work the tourists are not happy, the roads, the water, the electricity, all of that. It’s a holistic enabling environment but there are some tweaks you need for tourism and hospitality to work better.  And those are challenges, you know, tax regimes are just different from country to country, import regimes are different from country to country.  You’ve got to learn again in each one you operate in. _______________________________________________________________________ If you enjoyed this video about African government and hospitality why not watch more TV shows on The Hospitality Channel?