ANDILE KHUMALO: Thinking outside the 'beach, bush and berg' box
We clearly have a huge opportunity to attract more Africans to our shores, and in that way get a bigger share of global tourism
Visitors to our shores are grouped into same-day visitors and overnight visitors. The latter represent the real tourists. Of the 1.3million visitors we received in April, 29.8% were same-day visitors and 70.2% were tourists. Year on year, between April last year and April this year, the volume of tourists increased 15.5%, from 795919 to 919084, while month on month, between March and April this year the volume of tourists increased by 14.1%. It is also worth noting where these tourists came from. The vast majority came from Europe (62.1%), followed by North America (15.1%) and Asia (11.7%). This growth is a big deal, and something we need to pause, reflect on and ensure we take full advantage of. The first opportunity is the poor representation of tourists from the rest of Africa. To exacerbate matters, 97.8% of all tourists from the rest of the continent into South Africa came from SADC countries, with Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique and Swaziland leading the pack. According to the U...
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