Back in business: South Africa prepares for new invasion (Feature)

By Clare Byrne Jun 25, 2010, 8:06 GMT

Johannesburg - South Africa were bracing Thursday for a new wave of football fans as the World Cup enters the knockout stages on a tide of positive feedback about the hosts and the prospect of a titanic Germany-England clash.

With only eight games left in the group stages, supporters of the teams that have been eliminated are starting to pack their bags - making way for a new group of fans, who had been waiting to see if their team would make the last 16 before hopping on a plane.

Wednesday was a seminal day - with the United States, Germany and England all inching through on the back of a goal each in their final group games.

'The 23rd of June was a very pro-tourism day in South Africa,' Michael Tatalias, chief executive of the Southern African Tourism Services Association (SATSA) told the German Press Agency dpa.

The three countries are among South Africa's biggest tourism markets, but until now most German and English fans had given Africa's first World Cup the cold shoulder - apparently put off by the cost of the flight and horror stories about crime.

Tatalias estimates the maximum number of fans in the country at any time since kick-off on June 11 at between 150,000 and 200,000.

Tatalias' estimate is backed up by figures from the department of home affairs (immigration), which show a year-on-year increase of 111,548 foreign visitors between June 1 and 13 - probably due to the World Cup.

That's a far cry from the 450,000 foreign fans forecast by the government and local organizing committee (LOC) up until a few months ago and it shows in the half-empty hotels on non-match days in many host cities.

The industry is now hoping for a fresh invasion, led by the English and Germans.

With the two arch-rivals now pitted against each other for a quarter-final spot in what promises to be one of the most exciting games of the tournament on Sunday, England's Barmy Army are mobilizing anew.

'After the (England-Slovenia) game, we sold all our remaining packages for the next game within a few hours,' Nick Sandon, spokesman for Thomas Cook Sport UK, told dpa.

The 1,097-pounds sterling package includes return flights to Johannesburg, five nights stay in a game lodge near the city, a category-one ticket to the game against Germany, coach transfer to the venue in Bloemfontein and several game drives.

It doesn't include a sleepover in the City of Roses, which has only a handful of hotels, at least two of which were booked out within hours of Germany's 1-0 win over Ghana.

Two city centre hotels, the Stanville, which has 44 rooms, and the Halevy Heritage, which has 21, told dpa their phones rang non-stop after the game.

'The last 12 hours were hectic!' a receptionist at the Halevy Heritage said.

A scramble for tickets to the game in Free State Stadium was also under way, with FIFA making only an extra 1,000 tickets available.

A number of England fans thought they had tickets but they had banked on Fabio Capello's men topping their group, in which case they would have been playing this weekend in the north-western Rustenburg, not Bloemfontein.

England's second place in Group C behind the United States means they have to hurriedly swap cities.

By contrast, German fans who gambled on their team leading Group D and bought tickets to the Bloemfontein game saw their faith pay off.

In both countries, the sudden lure of the World Cup is fuelled by the overwhelmingly positive feedback from fans and media already at the tournament.

'The story going back now is a fantastic story - with pictures of blue skies, people having a party and teams doing well,' Tatalias said.

'It just goes to show you,' he says. 'Franz Beckenbauer (the former German manager who had questioned South Africa's suitability as a host) knows a lot about soccer but very little about developing countries.'