How do you market a country with the sort of disgusting statistics we have?

SHOOT: Answer, just get marketers and figure it out. Forget the reality that it is a dangerous country, that crime and corruption is a chaotic levels. Just market it like mad because maybe you can earn some money. Great strategy there.

Marion Scher: The sad thing is what is being done to educate people overseas, especially with 2010 looming. I tell you what - virtually nothing or at least nothing I've seen in my travels.

On my recent flight back from Atlanta, the plane was full, mostly with Americans. But were they coming to stay in Johannesburg. Oh no - not Johannesburg. The ones I spoke to were either catching immediate connecting flights to Botswana or staying close to the airport 'til they could catch flights out the next day.

clipped from www.bizcommunity.com In the last year I've visited the US and the UK and the one thing they have in common is their fear of South Africa as a destination. Unless they've already been here, you'll hear the same refrain - “South Africa, oh no, wouldn't consider going there - way too dangerous.” So alright, no good kidding ourselves, we do have a crime problem. But hey, I've just come back from Dallas where the local TV news featured a story on restaurants closing down. Not from lack of customers but from repeated break-ins. And how come everyone there has an alarm on their house? While in the US, I heard from numerous people that South Africans had told them: That it wasn't safe to walk on the streets in SA That there was no way we could hold a decent FIFA World Cup SA was such a backward nation ALL our politicians were corrupt - somehow they ignored what was on their own back yard here There were very few real houses - mainly shacks There are riots every day You needed bodyguards to go out of your house