JOHANNESBURG, January 17th (AMSP/CGTN) – – South Africa is ramping up efforts to attract more tourists to the country…by giving special privileges to dozens of what it calls “trusted tour operators”.
The operators are all major industry operators and will be permitted to cut the visa red tape for tourists from China and India. Officials believe the measure will encourage more travellers from these countries to visit South Africa.
The launch of the Trusted Tour Operator Scheme or TTOS seeks to overcome key barriers in the visa system and enhance South Africa’s appeal as a preferred destination for the growing tourist markets of China and India. The TTOS was announced last year to boost tourism spending from China and India.
In 2023, Chinese tourists made over 100 million outbound trips, with South Africa only receiving a small amount of those arrivals.
“I think last year we received 93,000 Chinese tourists. I think the peak we ever reached was about 133, 135,000 Chinese tourists. That was about 10, 12 years ago. Australia receives over a million Chinese tourists per year and Australians are gunning for two million. There’s no reason South Africa shouldn’t be attracting 500,000 Chinese, a million Chinese. We really should set targets of 500,000 to a million Chinese over the next five years. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be achieving that. But we do have to make it easier for them.” Michael Jones, Co-Founder of Create Consulting, told CGTN.
Michael Jones’ firm works in the Chinese travel market. They try to attract Chinese tourists to a number of countries on the African continent. Jones says the Trusted Tour Operator Scheme will go a long way in cutting the visa red tape.
“Currently, it takes eight weeks for a Chinese individual to get a tourist visa. For group tourist visas, it takes anything from three to four weeks. Now, I need to stress that this is now improved. A few months ago, a year ago, it was even longer than that. And frankly speaking, since post-COVID, Africa has really become the flavour of the month for Chinese outbound travellers,” said Michael Jones.
While the scheme has been roundly welcomed by the hospitality industry, they believe that the next step should ideally be to introduce a visa waiver for these two countries.
“Look, China and India, I think we did just have a look at how important they are as markets into South Africa. They are the two largest and fastest growing tourism markets in the world over the last 20 years. We have done appallingly in both these markets. The main impediment has been our visa regime. So a reform to that visa regime is incredibly important. First prize for us would be a visa waiver scheme. We don’t just believe that there should be visas for India and China,” said David Frost, CEO of the South African Tourism Services Association.
China and India are the world’s two most populous countries and South Africa is keen to continuously improve its systems to ensure that tourists from these countries find it easy to travel there.
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