South Africa must diversify its tourism offerings beyond Cape Town and the Kruger National Park to revive the sector, which has yet to reach the growth levels seen before the Covid-19 pandemic. (Photo by: Edwin Remsburg/VW Pics via Getty Images)
South Africa must diversify its tourism offerings beyond Cape Town and the Kruger National Park to revive the sector, which has yet to reach the growth levels seen before the Covid-19 pandemic, industry officials say.
In 2019, just over 2 612 000 international travellers visited South Africa, according to data supplied by the Southern Africa Tourism Services Association. This dropped in 2020 — during the Covid-19 pandemic — to just below 665 000. By 2023, international tourist arrivals had recovered to just over 2.06 million, improving slightly to above 2.13 million last year, still below pre-pandemic levels.
According to 2024 data from Statistics South Africa, in 2019, the tourism sector contributed 3.7% to GDP but this tumbled to 2.1% in 2020. In 2021, the sector accounted for 2.3% of GDP, and for 3.5% in 2022, the statistics agency said.
Before the pandemic, South Africa’s tourism attractions were spread across the country, and Cape Town and Mpumalanga were “not as prolific”, Southern Africa Tourism Services Association chief executive David Frost told the Mail & Guardian.
Afterwards, visitors to South Africa from the US made a strong comeback, but tourists from Europe, including the UK, Germany, France and Italy — who were typically strong contributors to the sector — did not return in the same numbers.
“What has come back strongly [post-Covid-19] is the Kruger and Cape Town massively but the rest of the country is very marginalised,” Frost said.
According to the Travel Smart Crew, the greater Kruger area contributed 47.1% to the group’s turnover for 2023 and the Western Cape (excluding the Garden Route) contributed 29.3%.
North West contributed 5.3%, followed by Eastern Cape at 5%. KwaZulu-Natal made a 2.7% contribution, Gauteng 2.2% and Mpumalanga 0.8%, while Limpopo, Free State and the Northern Cape collectively contributed 2.3%.
African Safari Collective has set up luxury resorts in KwaZulu-Natal to expand travellers’ options, its marketing and strategic relationship manager Adrene van der Merwe told the M&G on the sidelines of a recent convention hosted by South African Tourism at Sun City.
“Typically, you would have your first-time international traveller coming into South Africa, doing Cape Town, doing Kruger National Park and then moving on from there,” Van der Merwe said.
“What we’re saying is KZN, which is at the moment your secondary destination, could become that number one as well. If you think about KZN, you’ve got your battlefields, so a lot of history happened in this area … There is a very strong Zulu culture in this area and then you’ve got your animal safaris as well.
“You’ve got your big five, fishing, the rivers and birdwatching. You’ve got the beaches, which are, for the most part, lovely beaches to swim, snorkel and dive and look at whales and dolphins and the sea turtles.”
Lesser-known regions tend to suffer economically when tourism is low, Frost said.
“It’s a serious problem, because we have businesses in these other areas, who are not seeing the benefits of tourism. We are not fulfilling our mandate of being the big arbiters of job creation,” he said.
The tourism sector is moving in a positive direction but diversifying experiences would help boost it and, in turn, the economy, newly appointed South African Tourism chief operating officer Darryl Erasmus told journalists at the convention.
“”There are many small towns across the country who have used tourism very effectively to drive economic development in that town, and if you can begin to use those stories, elevate those stories, it starts to become best practice trying to implement similar things in different towns and different cities,” he said.
“We must recognise that people who visit a country … maybe for the first time, are experiencing the iconic things, but whilst being here, they’re exposed to much more and understand that it needs another visit.”
Tourist arrivals from the Americas grew by 10.9% from 2023 and remain South Africa’s top market. Arrivals from Europe increased by 1.1%, while those from Asia were up 4.2%.
The Middle East saw a decline of 16.1%, although tourists from Saudi Arabia increased by 12.1% from 2023, statistics from the department of tourism show.
Frost said the rhetoric around South Africa’s offering needs to change.
“We are setting the structures up where we can start working together and looking how we can actually change this picture of a skewed geographical spread, because Cape Town is not the only thing — it’s not the only place you need to come to in South Africa,” he said.
This journalist’s trip to Sun City to attend the Megalekker Escape 2025 Convention was sponsored by South African Tourism.