South Africa's tourism performance steady as the year draws to a close,report
The latest analysis of South African Tourism’s (SA Tourism) performance in 2018 shows a slight growth during the period January to October when compared with the same period last year.
According to South Africa's Tourism’s Strategic, Insights and Analytics (SIA) report for the January to October period. there was an overall increase in growth of 1,7% when compared to the same period in 2017. This amounts to 8,6 million international tourists that have visited South Africa during this reporting period.
African land and air arrivals have been key to the growth with air arrivals from the continent showing a healthy 6,8% rise. Increase in arrivals from Angola (38%), DRC (19,9%) and Ghana (17,8%) has stimulated this growth. From an African land arrivals view, the 2,7% increase in growth can be attributed mainly to increase in arrivals from visitors from Malawi (13,3%) and Zimbabwe (7,7%).
“It’s really encouraging to see visitors from the continent making South Africa a destination on their travel plans,” said South African Tourism CEO, Sisa Ntshona.
“The growth is in line with some of the recently implemented visa reforms, as well as some regional airlines, increasing their flights into South Africa. We look forward to working closer with them through our Tourism Execution team on the continent to drive more visitors to South Africa.”
On the international front, Ntshona acknowledges that there is work to be done.
“We are still recovering from barriers that had affected us in 2017 and the early parts of 2018, but are working extremely hard in addressing these challenges,” explained Ntshona.
“With the visa reforms in place and the unabridged birth certificates issue taken care of, we can now work tirelessly in promoting South Africa as a destination of choice having taken away factors that have previously made people doubt travelling to South Africa.”
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