A moment of silence for Montagu as tourist town goes into lockdown

Apart from confining people to their homes for the next three weeks, the 21-day lockdown has literally shut the doors on SA's tourism industry. In the town of Montagu, Western Cape, where tourism is one of the biggest drivers of business, the effects will be devastating.

PJ Basson, manager and part owner at the Montagu Country Hotel, said the hotel found itself "lucky enough" this week to not have to kick guests out ahead of the shutdown.

"All our international guests have left and other groups have cancelled," he told me as they were making plans to close on Thursday, after serving their last guests breakfast.

Up until the declaration of a national disaster on Monday, they had been fully booked. "In the case of a couple of days, that completely fell away. We've taken deposits for the next couple of months and most of those had to be refunded."

They will avoid laying off staff for as long as possible so they hotel is ready to hit the ground running when tourists return.

Mareletta Mundey from Montagu-Ashton Tourism said the lockdown would bring the town to a standstill. "Montagu has +/- 15,500 people living here and our monthly visitor numbers sometimes exceed 30,000."

She said there were around 700 people directly employed in the tourism industry in Montagu, not including people employed in secondary industries and small businesses that also rely on the tourism sector.

Despite the dark days looming, Basson said they had to stay positive. "When something happens we're always the first-hit industry but when things recover we're also the first industry to start up again."

Mundey agreed. "Now is the time to take care of each other, and to maintain a positive spirit. We know this will hurt, but we remain positive that community spirit will prevail after all this is over."

When it is, they will be ready to welcome visitors with open arms.