Cape Town – Minister of Tourism Derek Hanekom has confirmed a decline in International tourist numbers to South Africa in the second half of 2014, which he says could be attributed to both Ebola fears and the implementation of strict new visa regulations.
“What we’ve seen is a decline and the most alarming in the declining numbers would be China, although some European countries have also dropped,” he told Traveller24.
Hanekom said that while the department cannot really analyse the phenomenon in any kind of exactness, based on feedback from tour operators, they suspect that the main factor leading to the decline in visitor numbers from European countries would be the Ebola scare.
“There’s not much we can do about that, except continuously send out a message of reassurance,” he said.
In a recent release on their website, the DA said that STATS SA’s tourism figures for 2014 indicated that arrivals from China dropped 24.6% to just under 83 000.
This is especially alarming as South African Tourism had reported a steady rise in Chinese tourists in previous years, with a 14.7% increase to reach 151 847 in 2013.
While fears surrounding Ebola have also been blamed for a drop in Chinese tourist numbers, Hanekom said that South Africa’s fourth largest long haul source market was also profoundly affected by the implementation of new visa requirements which came into effect in May 2014.
The requirement for people to appear in person for the capturing of bio-metric data has proven to be especially problematic due to the lack of visa facilitation centres, specifically in China where there are currently only centres in Beijing and Shanghai.
“There is a lot of uncertainty. So, when people are trying to book their next holiday, they’re not sure what is required of them. Do they have to physically go to Beijing when they live 2 000km away?” Hanekom said.
Tourists from India had been plagued by similar problems, since there had only been visa facilitation centres in Mumbai and Delhi. However, the recent opening of seven new visa facilitation centres by VFS Global in other major Indian cities has done much to ease congestion and confusion.
The department of tourism has been consulting with the department of home affairs to implement similar measures in China.
As one of South Africa’s largest source markets and a fellow BRICS nation, one obvious solution to the problem seems to be allowing Chinese tourists to travel visa-free.
“That is not within our domain to decide. But clearly one has to continuously look at which countries need visas and which don’t and we have to take into account that we’re part of the BRICS group of nations,” he said.
Hanekom added that although visa-free travel, along with other innovations such as the implementation of E-visas as well as visas on arrival are outside of the department of tourism’s domain, they were important subjects of discussion to be had with the department of home affairs.
“I know that the department of home affairs is looking for more effective options, because it’s in their interest to make it easier to issue visas and at the same time ensure that they’ve got the necessary statistics and biometrics,” he said.
Traveller24
