Cape tourism feels the pinch

Johannesburg - The number of visitors to Cape Town is expected to dip this southern summer season as the international financial crisis grounds many Western travellers, South Africa's Business Day reported Wednesday.

South Africa's "Mother City", with its spectacular Table Mountain backdrop, sandy beaches and nearby vineyards, is the country's top tourist destination.

The city is particularly popular with moneyed Europeans. In 2007, 1.7 million people visited the Western Cape, according to the provincial tourist authority, Cape Town Routes Ltd.

"There is definite evidence of a slowdown in the inbound leisure business," the sales director of Southern Sun Hotels group told Business Day.

The manager of another hotel in the city's ritzy Camps Bay beachfront neighbourhood also said business was down on last year and said the first quarter of 2008 - peak tourist season - would be "a struggle."

Two airlines serving Cape Town, Comair, operator of British Airways and domestic airline kulula.com reported a fall of nearly 10% in passengers to the city compared to last year, the report said.

Tourism has boomed in South Africa since the end of apartheid and the advent of democracy in 1994. Nine million foreign visitors visit the country each year - a figure the government aims to nudge up to 10 million by 2010, the year South Africa hosts the football World Cup.

While the effects of the international financial squeeze on South African mining, manufacturing and financial markets are being closely monitored, this is the first indication that the tourism sector, which employs 1.2 million people directly and indirectly, could also be seriously affected.

- Sapa-dpa