Pretoria - The impact of the new immigration regulations, in particular those relating to children, could lead to a further decline in the number of tourists visiting the country, Statistician General Pali Lehohla said on Tuesday.
The policy was too new for any effects to have been felt and recorded, Lehohla told a media briefing but said evidence of the impact of the new regulations would be monitored.
“This will become a good basis to start measuring any changes to inform policy,” he said in Pretoria.
He was releasing statistics on tourism for last year and the first quarter of 2015, in which a general slowdown in the growth rate of tourists to the country was recorded.
“Of the 15.1 million people who arrived in South Africa last year, 9.5 million were tourists,” he said.
The controversial immigration laws governing the entrance and exit of children into and out of South Africa could be cause of friction, he said.
“We could presume at this point that it will have a negative impact on how children travel to the country, the evidence of that will play itself out in due course.”
Government policy compelling parents to carry additional documentation on top of their children’s passports kicked in at the beginning of June, the failure of which saw families being turned away at ports of entry and exit for failure to comply.
Commentators predicted a steady decline in tourists as a result, and on Tuesday Lehohla said the immigration rules which came into effect before the end of last year could be responsible for the sharp decline of some tourists, especially a steep drop in visitors from China.
“A comparison of the 2014 volumes with the 2013 volumes indicates that the number of tourists decreased from all overseas countries, except The Netherlands.”
China, he said, saw the biggest fall, of 45.1 percent: “We are not sure what the cause of this could have been. It could be economic or due to stricter immigration laws,” he said.
Lehohla described tourists as visitors who stayed at least one night in collective or private accommodation in the place visited, and said the regional distribution of tourists last year indicated that 74 percent were residents of SADC countries.
A total of 24 percent came from overseas, while two percent came from elsewhere on the continent.
Among the 10 leading countries for overseas tourists were the UK (402 000), the US (309 000), Germany (275 000) France (132 000), Netherlands (131 000), Australia (111 000), India (86 000); China (83 000), Canada (60 500) and 58 600 Italians.
Zimbabwe, with just more than 2 million visitors, provided the highest number of tourists from the SADC region, followed by Lesotho at 1.5 million, Mozambique (1.3 million), Swaziland (919 000), Botswana with 556 000 tourists, 211 000 Namibians, 177 000 Zambians, 167 000 Malawians, 54 000 Angolans and 30 000 tourists from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
South Africa also had a lot of Nigerian, Kenyan, Ghanaian and Ugandan tourists coming in from beyond the SADC countries, said Lehohla.
He said more men than women had come in as tourists.
Almost 90 percent of tourists were aged between 15 and 64; 6 percent aged younger than 15 years and five percent were 65 years and older.
“Through the information gathered we are able to monitor the niche growth of our markets, identify emerging markets and evaluate developing markets,” Lehohla said.
Pretoria News