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Johannesburg – Of the 3m tourists in South Africa during November 2016, 68% of these travelled from Europe.
This is according to data released by Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) on Monday. StatsSA used information from the Department of Home Affairs’ (DHA) immigration officer ports of entry into South Africa.
Over 2.5m tourists were foreign travellers. Apart from European travellers, 12.9% came from North America, 11% came from Asia and 3.6% came from Australasia.
About 73.4% of tourists from 10 overseas countries visited South Africa in November 2016.
These were Germany, the United Kingdom (UK), the United States (US), France, the Netherlands, China, Australia, India, Switzerland and Sweden.
Of all the tourists from Africa, the majority (97.1%) came from the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Most (26.9%) came from Zimbabwe, followed by Lesotho, Mozambique and Swaziland.
Tourists from other parts in Africa came from Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Uganda and Egypt, among others.
StatsSA showed that the majority of tourists (96%) or over 780 000 were in South Africa for holiday purposes. Over 25 000 were in South Africa for business and over 3 300 were in the country for study purposes.
Arrivals decline
The data shows that between November 2015 and November 2016, the volume of arrivals for both South African residents and foreign travellers decreased and the number of departures increased.
Overall, growth in tourism numbers was 0.3% between November 2015 and November 2016.
However, tourism levels were down 5.1% from October 2016, where over 3.5m tourists travelled to the country.
READ: Huge relief as SA relaxes visa rules
The latest figures show the tourism industry has made improvements since the DHA relaxed visa requirements it implemented in 2014.
The regulations required foreign tourists who need a visa to visit South Africa to appear “in person” and submit biometric data when applying for a visa.
These requirements resulted in a sharp drop in tourist numbers to the country. According to StatsSA’s annual tourism report for 2015 which came out in April 2016, the total number of tourists declined 0.3% from the previous year.
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