More tourists keep coming to SA

"Despite the global economic downturn, our focused marketing efforts and the hard work of everyone in the tourism sector are paying dividends," he said.

Although the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) predicted a slowdown in global arrivals in the second half of this year, he was delighted with a very strong start in 2012, and was confident that it would be a year worth celebrating for tourism in South Africa.

"We are very encouraged to see that our carefully formulated tourism growth strategy to increase tourist arrivals to the country is yielding the desired results, with excellent growth achieved in the markets where we are actively marketing destination South Africa, and good returns being realised in markets that we have identified as sources of strong tourism potential," he said.

According to Statistics SA, the tourism figures indicated that South Africa experienced an excellent first half of the year, attracting 4,416,373 tourists to the country between January and June 2012, compared with 3,996,760 tourist arrivals for the same period in 2011.

The tourism sector experienced particularly strong growth in overseas tourist arrivals, recording 17.1% growth in arrivals from outside the African continent.

A total of 1,163,477 overseas tourist arrivals were recorded for the first six months of 2012, compared with 993,364 tourist arrivals for the corresponding period in 2011.

Tourist arrivals from Asia grew by 40.7% and Central and South America by 54.4%.

The minister said the launch of South Africa Airway's direct flights between Beijing and Johannesburg had contributed to growth from this market, helping to meet some of the demand for destination South Africa in China.

A total of 60,272 Chinese visitors came to South Africa in the first half of 2012, which represented a large 68.4% growth compared with the first half of 2011, when South Africa received only 35,796 Chinese tourists.

South Africa was also benefiting from its marketing efforts and strong trade-relations work in other emerging markets, including India and Brazil.

South Africa recorded 21.1% growth in arrivals from India for the first six months of this year, and a 68.4% growth in arrivals from Brazil.

"In the two years since our successful hosting of the Fifa World Cup, Brazil emerged as one of South Africa's most promising tourism markets, and we've followed the success of the tournament with strong trade work to capitalise on increased interest in our country from this important market," Van Schalkwyk said.

Source: Sapa