Upbeat comments by politicians and tourism bodies about growth in the sector are decidedly at odds with the official numbers of foreign tourists visiting South Africa.
But one needs to look at more statistics to put this big increase in tourist numbers into perspective. The number of foreign tourists visiting SA is in fact back at 2010 levels when arrivals totalled just less than 11.6 million.Foreign visitors to SA increased steadily every year since 2000, from six million arrivals then to a high of more than 16 million in 2016.
The figure has increased by 42% over 2022, but is still 30% below 2019. Except for the decline in 2009 , the 2023 figure is the lowest in 20 years.Source: Data collected from Stats SA reports ADVERTISEMENT CONTINUE READING BELOW Other destinations recovering faster “That said, it remained still below the figure reported in 2019, before the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
Read: Let’s get to over 21m tourist arrivals before 2030: De Lille SA risks losing business investment over visa ‘chaos’ Billions of rands at stake over ‘swallow’ visa backlogs Home Affairs slammed for chasing away ‘swallow’ visitors In 2005, an international visitor got R6 to spend in SA for every dollar they brought here. This increased to R7.50 in 2010.