South Africa’s tourism industry is seeing an encouraging recovery as tourist arrivals for January reached a new record of over one-million people.
Data released by Statistics South Africa showed that tourist arrivals had grown 15% year-on-year in January.
This followed on a 7% decline in tourist arrivals for the 2015 calendar year.
The arrivals data for January revealed that growth was driven by buoyant demand from both overseas and African tourists, with 79% of tourists arriving from African countries and 21% from overseas.
Of the overseas visitors arriving in South Africa during January, arrivals from China grew by 93%, Germany by 22%, the UK by 16% and the US by 11%.
“The significant growth in arrivals from China is a welcome relief and it truly is an indication that the amendments to visa regulations for the Chinese market are already starting to bear fruit,” said Grant Thornton Advisory Services director Lee-Anne Bac.
Recent changes implemented to South Africa’s visa regulations, specifically for the Chinese market, included new visa processing centres, accredited travel company programmes and specific visa exemptions.
However, Bac reiterated that January’s growth was off the low base recorded in 2015.
“The actual number of Chinese tourists arriving in January 2016 is 9 406, still lower than the number of Chinese tourists recorded in January 2012 and in 2014, so there is still quite a bit of work to be done for us to successfully return to previous levels,” she explained.
She added that the Grant Thornton Advisory Services team’s calculations had shown that, had South Africa had not experienced the negative impact of the visa regulations on the Chinese market in particular, South Africa would have had 2 500 more Chinese tourists in January 2016 than what was actually recorded.
“A bumper month in January clearly indicates that the industry is on the rebound, which bears testimony to the tourism sector’s resilience and its ability to bounce back; however, there is still a lot of work to be done for us to regain our lost market share,” she concluded.