The department of home affairs has chosen 65 trusted tour operators who will be able to cut the visa red tape for tourists from China and India, in a move expected to boost the number of visitors from these countries.
The operators, who were selected from 141 applicants, are all major industry operators and include big SA names such as Springbok Atlas Tours and Safaris, as well as Chinese and Indian tour operators such as Thomas Cook India and state-owned China International Travel Service.
SA underperforms badly on attracting tourists from the world’s two most populous countries, with Chinese tourists currently accounting for just 1.8% of SA’s tourism spending and India just 3.9%, and the 93,000 tourist arrivals from China to SA contrasting with 1.4-million to Australia.
Home affairs minister Leon Schreiber initiated the trusted tour operator scheme that aims to increase tourism numbers based on a model of collaboration and risk-sharing similar to the department’s Trusted Employer Scheme for skilled work visas. The trusted employer scheme, introduced last year, has already boosted the flow of high-end skills into large companies, the department said in a statement on Tuesday.
Spurred by the efforts of the Operation Vulindlela task team, the home affairs department has implemented a series of long-awaited reforms to SA’s tourism and skilled work visa regimes over the past couple of years to attract much needed foreign tourism spend and foreign skills.
Schreiber said the fact that the new Trusted Tour Operator Scheme (TTOS) was able to attract such high-profile participants within the space of a few short months was a significant vote of confidence in the programme and “demonstrates the appetite for international tourists to visit beautiful SA”. The level of interest also boded well for the repositioning of home affairs as an economic enabler to create growth and jobs, including by significantly boosting tourist arrivals from the burgeoning source markets of China and India, the statement said.
The application process for the TTOS relied on home affairs’ upgraded digital capabilities and followed a thorough interdepartmental vetting and screening process. The department will now turn its attention to ensuring the participating tour operators are able to submit visa applications conveniently through a secure and reliable platform.
Schreiber said he looked forward to welcoming the first arrivals under TTOS within a matter of weeks, “as a tangible demonstration of how the seventh administration is working together to deliver real reform and economic growth to create jobs”.
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