SA tourism triple world average
10 January 2007
South Africa is set to break its tourism records again, with more than 4.6-million foreign visitors arriving in the country between January and July 2006 - the highest figure ever for the first seven months of the year, and a 15.8% increase over the same period in 2005.
Speaking at the opening of a tourism and leisure exhibition in Utrecht, Holland on Tuesday, Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said the latest tourism figures showed South Africa's arrivals growth rate far outstripping the rest of the world, "which averaged around 4.5% over a similar period."
The Cabinet first announced the latest figures following a meeting in Pretoria in November, saying they had exceeded "even [the government's] expectations."
The numbers put South Africa on target to beat the record tourism arrival figure of 7.4-million for 2005. They also put the country's tourism growth rate at around three times the overall growth rate for international
tourism worldwide.
According to the World Tourism Organisation's (UNWTO's) latest World Tourism Barometer, released in November, there were 578-million tourist arrivals worldwide in the first eight months of 2006, a 4.5% increase on the same period in 2005.
Africa leads in tourism growth
Africa, with a projected growth rate of 10.6% for 2006, is the world's regional leader in tourism growth, according to the UNWTO.
Compared to 2005, Africa's international tourist arrivals increased by 9.8% between January and August 2006, with sub-Saharan Africa leading the continent with growth of 12.6% - "pulled notably by South Africa, Kenya, Mozambique, Swaziland and the Seychelles," the UNWTO said in a statement.
According to Statistics SA, the fastest growth in the first seven months of 2006 was in SA's visitors from Africa and the Middle East (20.3%), followed by the Americas (11%), Asia and Australia (8%) and Europe
(3.1%).
International tourism to South Africa has surged since the end of apartheid. In 1994, the year of South Africa's first democratic elections, only 3-million foreign visitors arrived in the country.
By 2004, international arrivals had more than doubled to 6.7-million, and in 2005 they surged to a record 7.4-million.
Tourism key to Asgi-SA
The latest figures come at a time when South Africa is looking to tourism to boost its already impressive economic growth.
Tourism, along with biofuels and business process outsourcing, have been identified as key high-growth potential areas in the government's Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (Asgi-SA), which seeks to raise the country's economic growth rate to 6% and halve poverty and unemployment by 2014.
Earlier this year, Deputy President Mlambo-Ngcuka - who heads up Asgi-SA - said tourism "has already grown rapidly in South Africa, but is ready for a
second phase of growth that could take its contribution to GDP from about 8% to about 12%, and increase employment by up to 400 000 people".
SouthAfrica.info reporter
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