The session which took place at Kyalami Shisanyama in Midrand was attended by representatives from various tourism associations and travel trade partners in Gauteng and nationally, members of the Gauteng Tourism Authority (GTA Board) CEOs of the GTA, Gauteng Enterprise Propeller (GEP) and Southern African Association for the Conference Industry (SAACI), members of the media, signature events organisers and private sector partners.
Speaking at the event, MEC Motara confirmed that Gauteng has recorded R30bn in foreign direct tourism spend from its financial year target of R13bn. On international tourists’ arrival, the golden province performance soared to 2.6 million arrivals surpassing its financial year target of 1.605 million. From the domestic trips’ perspective, Gauteng is also showing strong signs of recovery with over 5.6 million domestic trips recorded.
“Between September and December 2023, we have put to test our quality eventing infrastructure, mainstreamed SMMEs, and broader townships, informal settlements, and hostel-based enterprises and deliberately packaged our municipalities as part of a coherent global city region with comparative and competitive advantages housed in our regions.
"These figures and statistics are not just numbers we rattle out of our heads or presentations from spreadsheets, they are the actual details of women and young people who benefited out of our combined efforts. They are economic catalysts, a representation of hope and hard work especially from a sector and ecosystem that few years ago was nearly destroyed by Covid-19,” emphasised Motara.
The Gauteng tourism, trade, and investment facilitation strategy is focused on prioritising Africa first as the main market, followed by other source markets such as the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, China, India, the Middle East, and Brazil. It is encouraging to see that Africa continues to lead in terms of international arrivals to our country and that our strategy is bearing fruits.
Accordingly, this provincial strategy aims amongst others to utilise instruments like the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to promote the Growing Gauteng Together Vision 2030 blueprint and opens up avenue to inter-continental travel, the building of quality African global events and aggregation of the skills and knowledge capacity to enable us to be competitive players in these fields.
“Gauteng’s exceptional performance signals that the province is on track to exceed its arrivals and revenue targets before the fiscal year concludes, marking a significant triumph for the province and ultimately the country. As South African Tourism, we are pleased with the performance and thought leadership role being played by this province,” explained Melusi Mngomezulu, South African Tourism head of insights and analytics.
