Arrival forms are becoming superfluous as digital scanning of visas and passports is proving a more reliable method to count tourist arrivals to South Africa, according to South African Tourism CEO, Thulani Nzima.

Nzima was reacting to a question from Tourism Update about the reliability of arrival forms as a means of determining the purpose of visit– particularly as visitors sometimes don’t fill them in or lie about the reason for their trip.
He said arrivals to South Africa were counted by the number of passports scanned at the country’s entry and exit points and not just by the number of arrival forms filled in. 
Of a total of 13.45m foreign arrivals to South Africa in 2012, 9.1m were recorded as overnight visitors or bona fide tourists in UNWTO terms, meaning 4.2m or 31.7% were same-day or transit visitors.  According to Statistics SA, 16.3% of all overseas arrivals were transit visitors in 2012, including 31% of all Chinese visitors and 42% of all Brazilian visitors. Nzima said South African authorities had no way of knowing where visitors departed to from South Africa, or for what reason.
In an unprecedented move, on April 25 President Jacob Zuma announced the 2012 international tourist arrivals statistics at a media briefing at Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront before going on a walk-about to meet and interact with tourists. He called the 10.2% growth “phenomenal” but didn’t mention that 5.9m of these 9.1m “tourists” came from South Africa’s immediate neighbours –including 1.8m from Zimbabwe, 1.6m from Lesotho; 1.1m from Mozambique, 768, 727 from Swaziland and 452, 158 from Botswana. Counting potential migrant labourers from Africa as tourists has long been a controversial point, described by some local tourism industry players as a government smokescreen to inflate its tourism statistics.
Zuma said overseas (non-African) tourism grew by 15.1%, with Europe contributing 1.39m, up 9.5% on 2011. South Africa’s top overseas markets remain the UK (up 4.2%), USA (up 13.6%) and Germany (up 13%), but China has climbed from eighth to fourth place with a growth of 55.9% to 132,334 tourists. Up 16%, France now ranks fifth.
Arrivals from India almost doubled, 18.2% and making it South Africa’s eighth largest overseas source market; with Brazil now in ninth place with a 44.7% increase on 2011 numbers. 
Zuma claimed the statistics proved that South Africa was setting itself apart in a competitive marketplace and that the country’s tourism marketing efforts were on track.
He said the results reflected Government’s effective diplomatic and economic policies. Tourism now was one of the main economic pillars of the country’s National Growth Strategy. “I’m very proud that a country that was once a pariah state is now a place that attracts such tourism growth. It’s the positive outcome of our transition to democracy.”  However, he warned against complacency and called on all South Africans to be ambassadors of their country. “We have a beautiful story to tell and a beautiful country to show off. Working together, we can do so much more in making South Africa a winning country.”