There’s a degree of nervousness in Brazil as it prepares to host the 2014 World Cup. Not sporting nervousness – that’s normal, even though everyone knows the country has a magnificent football record. The question is whether all the investment in new stadiums and transport infrastructure and publicity is going to pay off. It was also asked about the 2012 London Olympics. They left Britain with a strong feel-good effect, but did they ‘pay for themselves’ in pounds and pence?
It may be impossible to give a precise answer. Some attempts have been made, but it depends on what you include or exclude in the calculations, and over what time scale is used. There are also different definitions of “success’. But one thing worried Brazilians can certainly do right now is look at South Africa’s experience hosting the 2010 FIFA World Cup. That happened over three years ago. There was a lot of nervousness at the time over whether it would all work.
Taking just one industry – tourism – it seems that it really did work. Tourist arrivals increased peaked in 2010, but then resumed an upwards trend. Last year 9.188mn tourists visited South Africa, up 10.2% on 2011. James Rosen, a UK citizen who set up a South Africa based travel agency, recently said “I have no doubt this is due to the increase in exposure and tourism since the World Cup”. Tourism minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk says that inward tourism has grown consistently faster than the world average. It now represents 2.9% of the country’s economic activity, and close to 10%, if indirect effects are taken into account. Van Schalkwyk and other officials say that the World Cup, by putting their country at the centre of the world’s attention, gave them a great marketing opportunity. The question was: how were they going to use it?
They sought to build and diversify on the initial surge of visitors. So they are no longer marketing South African as a purely ‘safari destination’. Big game certainly remains a big attraction. Thiani Nzima, the head of South Africa Tourism says ‘after the 2010 World Cup we did not rest on our laurels. We launched a campaign, 20 experiences in 10 days, and we identified the need to show we are more than a safari destination.” So the 2014 campaign, known as ‘The Pilgrimage’ is being built around Nelson Mandela (it is the 50th anniversary of his imprisonment and the 20th of his presidency). They are also targeting different markets. They have a special campaign to promote internal youth tourism. There is also focused marketing on tourists from neighbouring African countries, who see South Africa as primarily a shopping destination.
Brazil, like South Africa, will have a wonderful opportunity to promote itself. Embratur, the Brazilian tourism agency, thinks tourists will spend up to US$25bn in the country in World Cup year. But the key will probably be what Brazil does after the World Cup. We know it as a country of football, beaches and samba: it will need to promote itself as all of that – and a lot more.
Six hundred GB Pounds buys you the following amount of Brazilian Real:
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