South Africa has emerged as the world’s fastest-growing tourism destination, with 6,4-million tourists visiting last year.
This is an increase of 11,1% from the previous year, according to the Ministry of Environmental Affairs and Tourism. Over the same period, long-haul destination rival Australia saw a 0,3% drop.
Figures for the first two months of this year are up 8,1% from 2002, with overseas arrivals up 17%, according to the ministry. The cricket World Cup contributed to the rise.
The World Travel and Tourism Council estimates tourism accounts for 7,1% of South Africa’s gross domestic product, contributing about R72,5-billion in 2002 and providing 1,5-million jobs. It is expected to grow by an average of 5,2% a year between 2002 and 2012.
“We feel quite good about the growth last year,” said South African Tourism CEO Cheryl Carolus on Wednesday. She said it was not just a matter of South Africa gaining from the international reluctance to fly in the aftermath of September 11. The country had vigorously pursued a new growth strategy.
This had meant accessing new markets like Asia, specifically India and China, and diversifying in traditional markets like Europe with a move away from those visiting families and friends towards young professionals.
Three main areas of caution remained, Carolus said: the war in Iraq and related international insecurities, severe acute respiratory syndrome and the weak global economy.
A focus on tourists from Africa, particularly Kenya, Tanzania and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries, was also under way. Some complacency had allowed Mauritius to make inroads into the SADC tourism market.
In addition to overseas tourists, there were 4,6-million visitors from Africa — most from Lesotho, followed by Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana.
While overseas tourists visited South Africa mainly for holidays, African tourists came to visit friends and family and to shop. But there was also a very strong business segment (25%), with another 10% arriving for conferences, according to a trends analysis by leisure and hospitality specialists Grant Thornton Kessel Feinstein.
Carolus said the domestic tourism market was often taken for granted. Because of apartheid, 80% of the population had little money and no culture of travelling. Now with an emerging young generation of blacks, tourism had new growth potential. The old product-based approach — “take it or leave it” — had to shift towards marketing South Africa’s diversity.
Grant Thornton Kessel Feinstein’s analysis shows a major tourism
increase in the Western Cape. About 1,4-million tourists visited the province last year, including 976 000 overseas tourists — just more than half of the 1,8-million overseas visitors who came to South Africa. The remainder came from Africa.
Foreign visitors spent R17,3-billion in the Western Cape, where tourism accounts for 9,8% of the gross regional product and 9,6% of jobs. Overseas visitors accounted for R12,7-billion, visitors from Africa R4,6-billion, with domestic visitors spending R3-billion.
The report confirms that Germany and the United Kingdom account for the majority of overseas tourists: 23% and 14% respectively. But even from these traditionally strong markets the number of tourists has grown. Visitors from the UK increased by 24%, Germany 22%, France 36%, Italy 30% and the United States 8%.
Kessel Feinstein’s Pierre Voges said this presented a challenge to the province, where the overwhelming majority of tourists had traditionally been white, affluent and looking for sun, sand and sea. He said there was a strong emerging white-collar market, including black professionals, which was interested mainly in hotel and resort-based tourism. There has also been an increase in blue-collar tourism via packaged tours.
But hotel rates in greater Cape Town are the highest in the country at an average of well more than R400 a day, against Johannesburg’s R350 and the national average of just less than R350.
Of the 12-million bed nights sold in 2002, 8,9-million were taken up by overseas tourists, who spent on average 9,1 nights in the Western Cape, the most of all the provinces.
Only Gauteng comes close, and there African visitors account for a substantial number of bed nights.