Pretoria - Funerals are the third major reason for South Africans' travelling within the country.

This has emerged from a survey on domestic tourism published by Statistics South Africa (SSA) on Monday. The survey took place between February and July 2008, with personal interviews being conducted with almost 24 000 South Africans regarding journeys undertaken in the previous six months.

Some 13% of day trips and overnight journeys were due to funerals, compared to 15.2% for holidays. Most (37.9%) of the respondents, however, travelled to visit friends and family.

According to SSA, there were more than twice as many funeral journeys than business trips.

Taxis are used for most day and overnight journeys, with cars coming second, except in the Western Cape where 65.1% of the trips were taken by car. Not even one-tenth of the day trips across the country were by bus.

In the case of overnight journeys religious activities and nature excursions were popular.

Those aged between 25 and 29 travelled the most and in the six months preceding the survey they undertook 1.2m overnight trips and 29 000 day excursions.

According to SSA, women travelled more than men and 75% of the journeys were undertaken by black South Africans.

- Sake24.com

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