The vast majority of South Africa’s total tourism revenue came from foreign tourists in 2016 – accounting for 70% and R75,5bn (€5bn) of revenue generated for the industry.

These were some of the findings in South African Tourism’s recently released Annual Report 2016, which showed that the increase in tourist spend was largely due to the growth in the total number of international visitors. The report also showed that international spend on food, transport and leisure-related activities had grown but that spend on accommodation had remained static.

Average length of stay for international tourists dropped slightly by 2.9% to 9.2 nights, accounting for 88.8million bed nights in total. Europe and Asia/Australasia were the main drivers of the decline in length of stay, down 12% and 10.6% respectively. Despite this, Europe accounted for the longest stays – with Swiss tourists staying an average of 13 nights per visit, and German and Dutch tourists staying for 12 nights.

The most-visited tourist attraction in SA was the V&A Waterfront with 1.1m visitors, followed by Cape Town CBD with 1m visitors, Cape Point with 862 000, Sandton City with 818 000 and Table Mountain Cableway with 786 000 visitors.

To download the report, click here.