Yesterday Tourism Update reported that the new Tourism Business Index (TBI) released by the Tourism Business Council reflected a grim picture.

But Tourism Update has found that the report does not correlate with what the inbound tourism sector is experiencing.

Foreign tourism into South Africa can be divided into three geographical divisions: visitors from neighbouring SADC states, which in June this year was 541 262 tourists and made up the bulk; from the rest of Africa, which was 13 549 in June; and overseas, which in the same month was 135 780.

But all these numbers are dwarfed by the size of domestic tourism, which is therefore the main influence on the TBI.

With foreign visitors thus relatively unimportant in the big picture and overseas tourists making up less than 20% of foreign visitors, Tourism Update dug deeper to check if the positive reports it has been getting from its readers, who are predominantly involved in bringing in visitors from overseas, tie up with the report.

In fact it is the opposite.

The TBI is quite wrong when it comes to the critically important overseas tourism sector.

The graphs below show SA government stats for overseas visitors for January to June 2017 versus 2016 which is the same period as the TBI. Overseas numbers grew by well over 10%, putting South Africa at the top of the class in global tourism growth.

One understands that the TBI needs to reflect the big picture, but ironically it is when the country is in the economic doldrums that its currency weakens and overseas tourists see even more value in a visit.

Overseas arrivals in SA January to June 2017 vs 2016