South Africa Tourism is planning to tap the huge potential of tier II and tier III cities in India and take the ‘Learn South Africa’ – a training programme for Indian travel agents to 19 cities, including Lucknow and Patna.The national tourism organization aims to attract at least 500,000 tourists from India by 2020 and has been organizing multicity roadshow.
In 2013, 1,12,672 Indian tourists visited the country located on the southern tip of African continent, while between January-March 2014, only 24,556 travelled there. South Africa’s top source market is the UK followed by the US and Germany, Slabber said.
The roadshow witnessed participation from first time entrants such as Franschhoek Wine Valley, Turnberry Boutique Hotel, Gary Kirsten Travel and Tours, Paarl & Wellington Tourism, Cango Wildlife Ranch, Nelson Mandela Bay Tourism, Double Tree By Hilton Cape Town among others.
While the data for the full year 2014 is yet to be collated, last year there were several challenges like problems in issuing visas due to manpower issue and the Ebola outbreak (in West African countries), which hit tourist arrivals. However, this year, a double digit growth in tourist arrivals is expected, in the range of around 12 per cent.
Hanneli Slabber, Country Manager, South African Tourism said that nearly 80 per cent of all outbound travel from India happens from the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat. “In order to woo Gujarati tourists, our government had trained around 3000 chefs to cook vegetarian varieties of food. Now, tourists from Gujarat would not have to bother about food while travelling to South Africa,” she said.
