SA's tourism ranking higher

SA improves two places in WEF tourism ranking

Last year the country was rated at 66 out of 139 countries.The index is based on three broad categories of variables that facilitate or drive tourism competitiveness.

These categories are summarised into the three sub-indices:

• The travel and tourism regulatory framework sub-index;
• The travel and tourism business environment and infrastructure sub-index;

• The travel and tourism human‚ cultural‚ and natural resources sub-index.

The first sub-index captures those elements that are policy related and generally under the purview of the government; the second sub-index captures elements of the business environment and the infrastructure of each economy; and the third sub-index captures the softer, human‚ cultural‚ and natural elements of each country's resource endowments.

One of the factors hampering the growth of tourism in SA is the availability of qualified labour‚ where it ranks second from the bottom‚ the same ranking it has for hiring and firing practices.

Unfortunately‚ the tourism industry cannot alleviate the shortage of skills by recruiting foreigners‚ as it ranks at the very bottom for the ease of hiring foreign workers.

On the other hand‚ SA ranks at the top for the presence of major car rental companies.

In January 2013 the rental car market increased it new car purchases by 48.5% year-on-year for the African Cup Of Nations. This meant that more than 22% of all new cars sold in January 2013 went to the rental companies.

SA also ranks fourth in the world for the extension of business trips‚ fifth in the world for the number of World Heritage cultural sites and tenth in the world for World Heritage natural sites.

The number of overseas tourists visiting SA rose by 12.2% year on year in November to 241‚413‚ Statistics SA's (Stats SA) said last month.

Mauritius was the highest ranked African country at 58‚ while Switzerland was the top country globally.

Stats SA said that total income for the short-term tourism accommodation industry increased by 5.2% in the fourth quarter of last year compared with the same period in 2011.

In November‚ the distribution of overseas tourists in SA was:

• Europe‚ 150‚013 (62.1%);
• Asia‚ 37‚733 (15.6%);
• North America‚ 29‚901 (12.4%);
• Australasia‚ 11‚012 (4.6%);
• Central and South America‚ 9‚715 (4.0%);

• Middle East‚ 3‚039 (1.3%).