The SA tourism industry is showing signs of a long-awaited recovery as income from accommodation finally rebounded to pre-Covid levels in July.
In a boon for companies operating in the hospitality sector, July saw income from tourist accommodation reach R2.68bn, a 7.7% increase from July last year and R200m higher than the previous month, according to Stats SA data.
The boost came primarily from hotels and “other” accommodation types, including lodges, self-catering establishments and bed-and-breakfasts, while caravan parks, camp sites and guest houses saw minimal increases.
This took SA’s tourist accommodation income back to pre-pandemic levels for the first time since the nationwide lockdown in 2020.
The strict travel and business regulations imposed under lockdown saw income from accommodation plummeting from R2.6bn in July 2019 to R209m a year later.
More than 1.2-million overseas tourists visited SA between January and July this year, reflecting a 6.2% increase from the first seven months of last year. Most visitors were from the US (22%) and the UK (13%). Another 3.9-million tourists visited SA from Africa in the period — an 8.4% year-on-year increase.
SA was on track to achieve its collective target of matching 2019’s international arrivals this year, tourism deputy minister Maggie Sotyu said earlier in September. SA had a revised target of 15.1-million tourists for 2030.
Sotyu said local tourism had benefited from favourable visa regulations for countries with diplomatic ties to SA, partly fuelling the sector’s recovery.
“Today, passport holders from 132 countries that SA has diplomatic ties with enjoy visa waivers, making our country one of the leaders in the visa-waiver categories,” Sotyu said. “Also pleasing is that we have fully recovered on the domestic tourism front and now need to consolidate on the gains and go beyond just travel.”
According to the deputy minister, SA’s economic outlook stood to benefit substantially from tourism’s recovery, with accommodation and catering services emerging as notable contributors to second-quarter GDP.
In 2022, the tourism sector contributed 3.5% to GDP, topping construction, agriculture or the utilities industries that year. While this represents an increase from 2.1% and 2.3% in 2020 and 2021, respectively, it is still lower than 3.7% in 2019.
Employment in the sector has followed a similar trend. From 2021 to 2022, tourism’s direct workforce shot up from 492,561 workers to 733,385, but remained below the prepandemic high of 777,686.
While SA tourism had gained markedly this year, Sotyu said more still had to be done in terms of increasing aviation capacity and improving visa facilitation for large markets, particularly India and China.
The sector’s sluggish recovery recently saw the cabinet pushing back the implementation deadline for SA’s tourism sector master plan to 2026, but Sotyu said the plan was “well under way, and the tourism stakeholders are holding each other accountable through the master plan structures”.
Additionally, the tourism crisis management strategy, developed by the tourism department in the aftermath of Covid-19, aimed to make tourism more resilient to future shocks, she said.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.