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Cape Town - While Cape Town features prominently in searches for flights among people in the UK and Germany, it seems Asian travellers mostly search for flights to Johannesburg.
This is one of the interesting trends identified in the Cheapflights Compass Report South Africa, which was launched in Cape Town on Tuesday.
The global flight search and travel deals platform analysed nearly 600 000 hours of search data accumulated for between April 1 2016 and March 31 2017.
"One could speculate that, while people from the UK and Germany are searching for flight options to Cape Town because of leisure travel, the dominance of Johannesburg among searches from people in Asia - especially Chinese - are because of business travel," Ricky Wilkes, global head of sales and digital travel deals at Cheapflights, told Fin24 at the launch.
At 83% and 80% respectively, travellers from China and Hong Kong strongly favour flying to Johannesburg, rather than the Mother City.
"With China’s growing interest in the investment and economic growth possibilities in Africa, the preference for Joburg may well be business related," states the report.
Germans, on the other hand, are twice as likely to choose Cape Town over Johannesburg, which suggests travel for pleasure rather than business.
"Cape Town may be renowned for its natural splendour, but it seems like the more bustling Joburg is the city of choice for foreigners travelling to the country. More than half (62%) of inbound searches favour flights to Johannesburg over Cape Town."
The report notes, however, that the larger number of direct international flights to Johannesburg might play a part.
About 65% of searches for flights to South Africa originate in the UK. The US and Germany come in second and third place - at 11% and 10% respectively. The Australia-Pacific region accounts for less than 15% of all flight searches. Of these Australia accounts for 7%, Hong Kong 3%, China 3% and Japan 1%.
As for South African travellers, the report found that the current rand exchange rate has not affected South Africans’ love of travel.
Data indicates that more than 86 000 times in the last 12 months, South African users of Cheapflights went on its platforms to make a flight or travel booking. This is a 51% increase from the corresponding period the previous year.
It seems most South Africans prefer to travel during school holidays and the UK remains the favourite travel search destination followed by the US. Other popular search destinations include Thailand, France and Italy.
“Despite the economic uncertainty South Africa is currently experiencing, South Africans are still travelling abroad, possibly saving up to do so instead of travelling more frequently within the country - and clearly international tourists still view South Africa as a prime destination – both for work and play,” says Andrew Shelton, managing director of Cheapflights.
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