Tourists are back but overseas arrivals still below 2019 numbers, Sisulu says

Tourism minister Lindiwe Sisulu said the country’s tourism sector was poised for a revival after the country recorded an impressive increase in arrivals in the first six months of the year.

Sisulu was speaking to journalists in Johannesburg on Thursday where she presented the domestic and international tourism performance for January to June this year.

“The total arrivals for January to June 2022 were 2,285,746 and this was a 147% increase from January to June of 2021,” Sisulu said.

She said international arrivals were still 54% below 2019 levels.

“In the first half of the year, Europe was the best-performing region, despite security concerns mounting due to the conflict in Ukraine.

The Americas are the second-best performing region. This market is slowly making its way back to pre-pandemic levels, performing at 40%  below 2019 levels.

“We are particularly pleased that the arrivals from the Americas increased by 331% and represented 128,991 arrivals,” Sisulu said.

Sisulu said the biggest market in terms of absolute numbers was the African land market, which had a 109% increase in arrivals compared to the same period in 2021 and easily dwarfing Europe and the Americas.

“The African air market brought in 1,634,244 arrivals.”

Sisulu said the biggest driver in domestic travel in the first six months of the year  was the easing and eventual lifting of Covid-19 regulations.

Tourism’s upward trajectory was overwhelming on the domestic front: between January and June 2022, 15.2-million domestic trips were taken.

This was a major win for the tourism sector as it was higher than pre-pandemic levels.

The most heart-warming aspect of the numbers was that the share of holiday trips increased by 23.8% compared with the same period in 2021, and the average spend skyrocketed 28.6%, said Sisulu.

“As a rule of thumb, you must have a buoyant domestic market because it is a silver bullet that turns locals into storytellers and ambassadors of their country,” Sisulu said.

The performance report showed that South Africans spent on average R2,850 on their domestic trips.

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