Tourism establishments from across South Africa have revealed that occupancy rates for the high season have been largely below expectations, measuring an average of between 70% and 80% of pre-pandemic levels.
As South Africa’s festive season surge comes to a close, 62% of respondents (comprising accommodation owners, managers and tour operators from the Western Cape, Gauteng, KwaZulu Natal and Mpumalanga) to a Tourism Update survey on high-season performance said their numbers had fallen short of expectations.
While 53.9% of respondents reported occupancy rates of between 60% and 80%, a significant proportion (23.1%) stated that their occupancy rates had still been below 50%.
The inflated prices of air tickets was the most commonly-cited explanation for the dampened performance, followed by struggles with securing flights, rising inflation and the continuing impacts of load-shedding and crime.
A vast majority of respondents (92.3%) reported that Traditional Europe (comprising key source markets such as the UK, Germany and the Netherlands) had been the best performing overseas source market for the season so far, with the remaining respondents identifying North America as their top market.
Preliminary figures start to emerge
While official figures on air traffic and overall visitor numbers will only be available in late January or early February, tourism stakeholders are beginning to gather early data related to air traffic and overall visitor numbers over the festive season.
James Vos, Cape Town’s Mayoral Committee Member for Economic Growth and Tourism, pointed out that international flights at Cape Town International Airport were at 93.6% of pre-COVID levels, and domestic flights at 72.3%.
“I’m happy to report that preliminary figures point to a good season for tourism in the metro with [the airport] processing up to 30 000 passengers every day.”
KwaZulu Natal, which has been beset by beach closures caused by flooding, had estimated that this year’s high season would attract 760 000 domestic visitors and 58 000 international tourists, bringing combined tourist spend of R4.1 billion (€227m). While numbers are still being tallied, FEDHASA National Chair Rosemary Anderson said a select number of hotels had recorded high occupancies.
“A lot of our hotel groups in the KZN area, despite all the negative information about the closure of the beaches, recorded figures close to pre-COVID levels. Some of the hospitality businesses that were close to the beaches were negatively affected and unfortunately did have a poor time. But generally it wasn’t as bad as anticipated,” Anderson was cited as saying by Moneyweb.
Importance of domestic, regional travel
Tshifhiwa Tshivhengwa, CEO of the Tourism Business Council of South Africa, said an increasing number of international flights, along with a renewed focus on domestic and intra-African travel, were standing the country in good stead for a strong 2023.
“It is our hope that these will help the tourism sector and reach our goals of growing the tourism sector to the over 3% contribution to the country’s GDP we last saw in 2019. We expect that these are the makings of a bumper tourism season for 2023.”
