TOURISM Minister Marthinus Van Schalkwyk remains confident that tourism will remain the fastest growing sector of the South African economy despite current economic woes. 
  “Our industry is by no means immune to the effects of the international economic crisis, but we are still confident that we will reach our target of 10m visitors in 2010. Our country continues to be a value-for-money destination and with international events like the Confederations Cup and World Cup lined up, there will be opportunities in abundance and tourism will retain the important role it plays in our economic growth,” he told a Local Government Indaba on Tourism being held in Cape Town this week.
 
He said despite the economic slowdown, 2008 had been a buoyant year for SA tourism. However, statistics for the first 10 months of 2008 show decreases in the month-on-month figures when comparing 2008 to 2007. Arrivals from Europe decreased by 6,5% and those from Central and South America by 4,6%. Arrivals from North America remained stable. Those from Australasia increased by 6,3% and those from the Middle East rose by 5,9%.
 
Overall arrivals showed an increase of 5,4% from January to October 2008, following on a growth rate of 8,3% in 2007 when more than 9m foreign arrivals were recorded.
 
The Minister said Deat remained committed to working with local government to spread the benefits of tourism. Since 1999, Deat was financially involved in 335 tourism projects in the nine provinces, aimed at enhancing tourism and improving local infrastructure. He said to date, more than R1bn had been spent on these projects, they had created about 1 500 permanent jobs and more than four million temporary work days.
 
He said a number of challenges were hampering an integrated and co-ordinated tourism approach at local government level. These included most local authority staff not having a collective approach to planning for tourism or destination management and in some cases local government did not use national and provincial information for tourism planning.