One in 22 people employed in the country at the end of last year worked in the tourism industry, which contributed 3.1% to GDP, a study by Statistics SA has found. The Tourism Satellite Account for SA report released last week provides an overview of tourism’s contribution in terms of employment, its effect on GDP and spending. It noted that workers in the tourism industry represented 4.5% of the total workforce surpassing the number in the mining industry. The government has recognised the industry’s potential to contribute to job creation and has identified it as one of the key growth drivers of the economy. The industry created 32,186 new jobs in 2015, increasing the tourism workforce from 679,560 in 2014 to a total of 711,746. This was despite a decline in the number of overseas tourists from 9.5-million in 2014 to 8.9-million in 2015 due to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and obstacles related to the new visa regulations.
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