Russia, US lead recovery in foreign tourist visits to SA in 2022
While foreign visitors to South Africa in December 2022 increased significantly since the previous year, the number is still at only 69% of visitors in December 2019 - before the pandemic.
This is according to data on arrivals in December 2022 that was released by Statistics SA on Tuesday.
Looking at data for the entire year, the only source market that exceeded its 2019 level in 2022 was Russia. Compared to 2019, arrivals from Russia in 2022 jumped to 107%.
For Lee-Ann Bac, director at the specialist tourism unit of international consulting firm BDO, the December 2022 data is, on the whole, disappointing.
"It shows [that] in December 2022, the total number of foreign tourists to SA was 677 838. This is a big jump from the 263 108 visitors in [December] 2021," says Bac.
Source: news24