Clifton beach in Cape Town. Red tape will continue to make it difficult for tourists with children to visit SA, says the Federated Hospitality Association of SA. File photo.The Federated Hospitality Association of SA says the government's lifting of the state of disaster will spell the end of many rules, like temperature checking and contact tracing, that burdened the hospitality industry.
According to regulations, announced last month, only children under the age of five are exempt from having to furnish either a vaccination certificate or negative PCR test to travel to SA. “This means even if parents are fully vaccinated, a family with children aged between five and 12 years has no choice but to pay for PCR tests, which we know in certain countries like the UK is not only onerous to obtain, but also expensive,” said Anderson.
“So unless you live in a major centre, a family wanting to travel to SA has to leave home a day early and incur the additional cost of a night in a hotel and then bear the additional worry that their travel plans will be derailed entirely if their child tests positive. This doesn’t make sense when SA’s regulations state that if you are Covid positive, yet asymptomatic, there is no need to self-isolate.