Will there be enough accommodation for fans in 2003?

There seems to be a lot of debate as to whether there will be sufficient accommodation for fans travelling to South Africa for the World Cup in 2003. Is this exaggerated? This is a country that had over 9.5million foreign tourist visitors in 2008. We are told that cities like Nelspruit require another 20,000 beds to cope with anticipated demand! Perhaps it is worth pointing out that these headlines are being put out by MATCH (the organisation handling ticket sales) who are encouraging all Hotel and Guesthouse owners in South Africa to register with them – is this just to generate traffic to their website? It seems ridiculous to ask all these venue owners to register with MATCH when the vast majority of these will already be registered with accommodation sites such as where2stay-southafrica. Most football/soccer fans are pretty savvy and know that with the internet at their fingertips it isn’t difficult to book flights and accommodation through established websites. If you have never visited South Africa before then you should know that the quality of B&B, Guesthouses, Lodges, self catering apartments is actually better than you will find in Europe and are definitely better value for money – even with the uplift that these owners will no doubt make during this period. You can’t blame them - wouldn’t you do the same thing if you were in their shoes! My advice to fans is to take a look at the websites offering accommodation and to book through these – the choice of accommodation is excellent. Of course anyone travelling to South Africa for the World Cup should really take advantage of the country and take in some of the fantastic things on offer to do – not just game reserves by the way although if you have never done this before you should! I will be monitoring the situation with interest and will report further along the line. Am interested to gain peoples feedback.

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