South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa has said that not only the country seeing more tourists coming to its shores, but spending more during their visits, while revealed that more than R25 billion realized in the first quarter of 2023 on tourism.
Ramaphosa who made this known on Monday with the topic: ‘Tourism is making a strong and sustained recovery’, said in the first quarter of this year, South Africa received just over two million visitors, more than twice as many compared to the same period in 2022.
South African President said the release of these figures during Africa Month is particularly encouraging given that the majority of visitors to South Africa in 2022, approximately 4 million, were from African continent.
“Travellers from the region and the broader continent are increasingly seeing South Africa as a premier tourism destination and are flocking here to experience our natural wonders and to spend money at South African businesses”.
According to him, “Statistics from StatsSA and SA Tourism that were released by Tourism Minister Patricia de Lille recently show that nearly 5.7 million visitors graced our shores last year. This was an increase of over 150% on the previous year”.
He stressed that despite heightened political, economic uncertainty and particular challenges, especially around electricity supply in the country, visitors see South Africa as attractive destination, unparalleled natural beauty, warm hospitable people, and good value.
Ramaphosa said, “The potential of our tourism industry was evident at Africa’s Travel Indaba held in eThekwini earlier this month. The Travel Indaba is one of the largest tourism marketing events on the continent.
“It regularly attracts high numbers of exhibitors, marketing bodies and representatives from hotels, airlines, tour operators and media from Africa and rest of the world. We were able to showcase the great variety of our tourism products to give further impetus to our recovery”.
Given the importance of growing tourism to South Africa’s economy, he said the Goverment is determined to forge ahead with the process of immigration reform to improve the competitiveness as a tourism destination.
“At this year’s 5th South Africa Investment Conference, I announced that we will be expanding the e-Visa system from the 14 countries in which it currently operates to include an additional 20 countries.
“There are obviously linkages between tourists visiting a country and potential future trade and investment. Last week, Department of Home Affairs published its visa reform implementation plan, which will help to further boost tourism and attract investment”.
Ramaphosa noted that recovery of South Africa’s aviation sector is also supporting tourism growth. “South African Airways is expanding into ever more markets on the continent, and we are seeing resumption of direct flights from major destinations.
“By way of example, Air China has resumed direct flights to South Africa, and United Airlines now flies directly to New York and Washington DC. The latest tourism figures are very encouraging and strengthen our resolve to ensure tourism becomes one of the biggest drivers of our economic recovery”.