The total number of travellers who visited South Africa through all its ports of entry during December was up 3% year-on-year (y/y) to 2,757-million, from the 5,7% y/y growth recorded in November 2007, according to Statistics South Africa data released on Thursday.
A month-on-month increase of 26,3% was recorded.
The number of foreign travellers who departed from South Africa in December was 832 481, an increase of 5,5% from the 789 115 recorded in December 2006.
The number of foreign arrivals was up 5,4% y/y to 890 391.
Stats SA data show that more than two-thirds (74,6%) of foreign arrivals were from Africa, while almost a quarter (24,8%) were from overseas countries.
A comparison of the changes between December 2006 and December 2007 indicates that the number of overseas arrivals increased by 0,2% from 219 933 in 2006 to 220 330 in 2007. Arrivals from Africa increased by 7% from 621 256 in December 2006 to 664 581 in December 2007.
Overseas travellers came mainly from Europe (68,2%) followed by North America (12,2%), Asia (9,2%), Australasia (6%), Central and South America (2,5%) and Middle East (1,9%). Virtually all arrivals (97,9%) from Africa came from the Southern African Development Community countries.
The data show the number of travellers from overseas countries has been increasing gradually since December 2005. Data indicate that the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States, The Netherlands, Australia, France, Sweden and Canada were the eight leading overseas source countries. Travellers from these eight countries constitute 67,9% of all travellers from overseas.
The number of travellers from these leading overseas source countries decreased with the exception of Germany (+7,1%), Australia (+10%) and Sweden (+18,9%) in December 2006 compared to December 2007.
The data on overseas travellers had 119 742 males and 100 279 females.
Overall, 95,4% of overseas travellers came to South Africa to visit. A detailed analysis reveals that all the overseas regions had more than 85% of travellers coming to South Africa for holidays.
The arrival data on South African residents show that 36,7% came by air and 63,1% by road. For their departure, 34% and 65.9% used air and road transport respectively.
When taking into consideration the countries of residence of travellers, it was found that for foreign arrivals, overseas travellers generally used air (89,1%) compared to road transport (10,7%) whereas travellers from Africa used road (91,1%) more than air transport (7,3%). ‒ I-Net Bridge