SA tops tourism ranking despite challenges

Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba addresses the media on Wednesday. His department will expand access to the visa system this year.

Photographer: Trevor Samson

The WEF ranking puts the country at the top of the sub-Saharan African table, ahead of the Seychelles and Mauritius, with the forum citing SA's rich natural and cultural resources, as well as a positive business environment "characterised by little red tape, and modest administrative and relatively good infrastructure compared with neighbouring countries".

But as the government gears up to implement controversial new birth certificate requirements for child travellers on 1 June, the WEF has warned that the tightening of visa policy and immigration laws "could certainly harm SA's travel and tourism competitiveness".

The visa matter is the main reason for SA's poor ranking (102) for "international openness, and SA also comes in near the bottom of the table on safety and security (119); health and hygiene (114); and labour (105)", with the WEF warning that SA must address these.

Also, the country must make further efforts to protect coastlines and biodiversity.

But despite its challenges, SA's ranking on the forum's index - which is compiled every two years - has risen by 16 rungs, from 64 out of 140 countries in 2013.

However, the results are not strictly comparable as the WEF has revised its methodology to take into account changing global trends in travel and tourism, as well as newly available data.

Spain displaced Switzerland as the world's most tourist-friendly country overall, and though Europe still leads with six of the Top 10 tourism-ready economies, emerging markets such as Brazil, China, Mexico, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates appear in the Top 30.

Grant Thornton's head of advisory services, Gillian Saunders, said SA seemed to have a positive profile overall as a desirable destination and the tourism industry had been reporting "okay to good" conditions over the past two years.

Visas and birth certificates are the biggest issues for the industry, though safety remains a challenge. And while last year Ebola was an issue, this year xenophobia has been a deterrent for some.

The Department of Home Affairs had agreed to delay implementation of the controversial requirement for an unabridged birth certificate for child travellers in response to protests from the industry, but the requirement is now due to be implemented on 1 June.

In a briefing before his budget vote speech yesterday, Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba said the department would expand access to the visa system this year by opening two new centres in China, to join the nine new centres opened in India.

It would also begin upgrading the electronic movement control system at ports of entry to capture the biometric data of all foreigners entering the country.

The WEF says that "new middle classes" from countries such as China, "senior travellers from the West and the millennial generation are increasingly shaping the travel and tourism industry".