Cape Town - Tourism in South Africa is steadily growing and the ongoing royal visit is doing its share to help boost the numbers.
More than 100 international journalists arrived in Cape Town at the weekend to cover Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s visit to South Africa.
The visitors are set to boost the Cape’s economy. Tourism “generates one job for every 12 international visitors and remains a key priority sector for the City of Cape Town”, according to James Vos, the mayco member for Economic Opportunities and Asset Management.
Welcoming the journalists, Tourism Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane said: “The royal visit not only demonstrates the strong economic and trade relations between South Africa and Britain. It also exposes South Africa to the outside world as a destination of choice.”
Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) has published its results for the monthly survey of South African residents and foreign travellers who entered or left South Africa in June.
According to Stats SA: “In June 2019, 3355904 travellers (arrivals, departures and transits) passed through South Africa’s ports of entry/exit.
“They were made up of 1080305 South African residents and 2275599 foreign travellers.”
A comparison between the movements in June last year and June this year indicates that the volume of arrivals and transits increased for both South African residents and foreign travellers.
The breakdown of the tourists by region is as follows: 154361 from overseas; 565561 from SADC countries; 13222 from “other” African countries, and the country of residence of 1410 tourists was classified as unspecified,” said Stats SA.
Meanwhile, South African Tourism (SA Tourism) met key industry players in Qatar last week as part of its en-
gagement strategy in promoting
South Africa as the tourism destination of choice to Qatari citizens and residents.
Neliswa Nkani, SA Tourism’s Hub Head for the Middle East, India, and South-East Asia region, said: “We look forward to working closer with all our partners in Qatar so that we can increase arrivals to South Africa and work towards the 2030 goal of achieving 21 million international visitors to or country.”
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