Cape Town - South Africa's top tourist
hub Cape Town expects a 13 percent jump in tourist arrivals this
year to 1.77 million, officials said on Thursday, a rare bright
spot in an economy that slid into recession in March.
Cape Town has the country's four most popular attractions,
including Robben Island - apartheid's most notorious jail where
former president Nelson Mandela spent 18 years.
South Africa' economy is in dire need of some positive news.
It fell into recession in the first quarter of the year and
is seen in Reuters polls growing just 0.7 percent for 2017 as a
whole. Unemployment is at a 14-year high of 27.7 percent.
The country's credit rating, meanwhile, has been downgraded
to junk by two of the top three credit rating agencies.
But tourists have been coming, possibly encouraged by the
weak rand. It has falled more than 20 percent against the dollar
since a high last year.
Britain, Germany and the United States were the three
leading sources of tourist arrivals to the Western Cape
province, Alan Winde, regional minister of economic
opportunities in the Western Cape province, said.
"Tourism can help South Africa to course correct its current
economic trajectory," he told reporters.
Arrivals to Cape Town reached 1.56 million in 2016 from 1.38
million in 2014, with foreign spending rising by 3.6 billion
rand to 18 billion rand ($1.4 billion) over the same period,
Winde said.
According to South African Tourism, some 10 million
foreigners overall arrived last year.
Tourists numbers to the Western Cape, which was the
country's best performing region in terms of paid bed nights and
first time vistors, have recovered from 1.32 million in 2015
when strict new visa rules were implemented. The rules have
since been lifted and flights were also increased as tourism
rebounded.
The Treasury said in February that tourism contributed 3
percent to GDP in 2015, and 711,746 people or 4.5 percent of the
total workforce was employed in the sector.
"We believe that the tourism sector, which is not rand
hedged, has the potential to pull us out of recession and to
save and grow jobs," Winde said.