SOUTH Africa is the only country in the world to have boosted its tourism inflow since the terror attacks on the United States last September, according to Tourism Minister Valli Moosa.
”South Africa has defied gravity. Whereas tourism has collapsed in many countries, we have increased in all our markets around the world, especially Europe and Asia, except the United States,” Moosa told a tourism conference in Durban on Saturday.
Figures released at the conference showed that 18 469 more foreign tourists visited South Africa in January this year compared with the same month last year — the equivalent of close to two jumbo jets full of passengers each day of the month.
The statistics emerged from a survey of 150 international tour operators.
The Johannesburg-based Sunday Times reported that Melville Saayman, a South African university professor who conducted the survey, said more tourists chose South Africa after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington as perceptions changed about what constituted a safe destination.
Moosa told the conference: ”Tour operators throughout the world actually use the term ‘hot’ when referring to South Africa.”
By comparison, tourism in east Africa has dropped 25% since September 11.
A New York Times report said Americans were attracted by South Africa’s ”inexpensive, first-class hotels and restaurants, luxurious game resorts and this country’s warm welcome to tourists”.
Moosa said South Africa’s diversity made tourists feel welcome regardless of their race, religion or language.
Saayman said the tourism industry needed to do more to dispel the perception that South Africa was unsafe, and that tourists should be warned of big-city crime. Flights to South Africa should be increased, with more airlines admitted to the route, he added.
South Africa is now the world’s 25th tourism destination — up from 52nd before the end of apartheid in 1994. – AFP