Massive visa delays, a great number of visas denied and poor service (mostly lack of reciprocal communication) are the three biggest challenges to inbound tourists visiting South Africa.

This was highlighted in a recent informal Tourism Update readers’ survey. It was launched to determine the extent to which visa challenges are a barrier to tourism growth in South Africa.

This comes after owner and Director of Alpha Destinations, Angela Matthews, highlighted her concerns to Tourism Update last year after a Mexican family of six was on the brink of cancelling their trip – at a non-refundable stage – due to chaos, rudeness, apathy and lack of understanding by South African embassies in London and Mexico.

Matthews has since confirmed that the well-connected Mexican family received the outstanding visa application (after it was initially denied) due to intervention by the Mexican Ambassador to South Africa.

Appeals for assistance and response to media queries fell largely on deaf ears from the SA embassies in London and Mexico City, as well as from government bodies in SA, including the Departments of Tourism and Home Affairs.

The Tourism Update survey showed further that 71.4% of respondents had lost bookings due to delays on the issuing of visas, including e-visas, and 57.1% said they had lost bookings due to visas being declined.

A trusted Tourism Update source said she was told that only one out of every 100 visa applications received at the London Embassy was approved.

Matthews, who has brought her visa concerns to Tourism Update regularly, said: “It is very difficult to say how many potential bookings we lost due to the visa challenges. But I am sure it is a significant number.”

Anecdotal support

A tourism consultant who wished to comment anonymously said that in one recent case, a Canadian tourism visa took over six months to be issued. The application was submitted in May but the planned December holiday had to be postponed.

An operator at DMC company, Cross Country, said he too had had issues with a Mexican client in the Netherlands whose visa was denied “for no reasonable reason”. He encountered the same apathy and rudeness regarding a client from India.

“I had to do a lot of running around for them. And most likely the daughter will not be able to join her mother on the trip to SA soon as her visa status is still not known.”

Head of Operations at Go2Africa, Tracy Payne, had a similar experience. “A client had to cancel their family holiday to South Africa. The client applied in November for a December 24 arrival but the visa application was denied.

“We got Tshif (CEO of the Tourism Business Council South Africa, Tshifhiwa Tshivhengwa) involved and he got the application seen to but the Department of Home Affairs declined the application based on the fact that the bank statements submitted were not certified.”

Payne explained that once a visa is denied, the traveller has to reapply and start the process from scratch. The family cancelled their December trip and are still waiting to hear whether their visas have been approved.

e-Visas a ‘total farce’

Matthews believes that if visas for key source markets cannot be removed altogether, there should at least be a more extensive and urgent roll-out of e-visas.

But Tourism Update understands from reader feedback that the e-visa systems are also often down.

One DMC said the e-visa programme in key source markets was “a total farce” as it was impossible to get hold of a human being after long periods of no response from the system.

CEO of Live 4 Africa Travel, Gelle Ritchie, agreed, noting that her client had to fly to another country to apply for their visa in person.

“There was no assistance or reply even after even after escalating the matter to a senior member in government,” she said.