TravTalk India Online Magazine
South African Tourism hopes that the ranking of India will raise higher from the 8th spot, with its annual mega training event aptly titled ‘Learn South Africa’. The target is to cross 100,000 Indian tourists this year.
South African Tourism (SAT) picked Mumbai to start its 17-city training programme that it calls ‘Learn South Africa’ – and aptly so. The city has consistently been the top source market for driving tourist traffic in to South Africa. Mumbai’s session witnessed an impressive attendance of 150 travel players.
The seventh edition of ‘Learn South Africa’ (Learn SA) that it is conducting along with the Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI) will cover metros as well as Tier-II and III markets. On the Indian market, Hanneli Slabber, Country Manager India, SAT, says, “The preference for holidays in South Africa has been on a rise amongst Indian travellers over the past few years and is expected to continue in 2017. Last year was a milestone year for us at South African Tourism in India and we are determined to set new benchmarks for the industry as well as ourselves by making 2017 bigger and better. Our internal target is to welcome more than 100,000 Indian visitors in 2017.”
Indian leisure numbers to South Africa surged 21.7 per cent during 2016 to close at 95,377, climbing to number 8 among South Africa’s international source markets. This is vis-à-vis 78,385 arrivals in 2015. Last year also saw the overall spends from India (only in-country on-tour spends, excluding flights and attractions, hotels booked in advance) crossing 1.2 billion ZAR by the year end. Slabber also revealed a significant trend about Indian travellers to South Africa. “Not only do Indians make for the top two nationalities to undertake the thrilling Bloukran’s Bridge bungee, they also rank number 3 in undertaking shark-cage diving in South Africa. Both these trends point to a fast-emerging group of travellers that are adventurous,” she adds.
