The South African tourism industry is slowly recovering from the ravaging Covid-19 pandemic as it is now seeing profits.
The tourism income is on the steady road to recovery in South Africa after it took a beating amid the Covid-19 pandemic, albeit still at pre-Covid rates.
Independent Media Online reports that the latest tourism and migration figures published by Statistics South Africa on Monday showed income from tourist accommodation.
The industry grew by 67.1 percent year on year in June. This following May’s 63.8 percent y/y (revised) lift.
According to an economist from Investec, Lara Hodes, she says the hotels’ segment of the market was largely accountable for the uptick, contributing 52.2 percent points, on the back of growth of 116.5 percent y/y.
“Notwithstanding, the robust pick-up in demand since the onset of the pandemic, occupancy rates, however, remain below pre-Covid levels,” Hodes said.
“This combined with a slowing global growth outlook, with the IMF (International Monetary Fund) dropping its GDP (gross domestic product) forecast for this year and next to 3.2 percent and 2.9 percent respectively, will weigh heavily on consumers, with travel viewed as a non-essential expense.”
The statistics also reveal that the uptick was the result of a 43.1 percent increase in the number of stay unit nights sold and a 16.7 percent increase in the average income per stay unit night sold.
Checking out the results published by the UNWTO World Tourism Barometer, it paints a picture that international tourism saw a strong rebound in the first five months of 2022, with almost 250 million international arrivals recorded.
This versus just 77 million arrivals logged between January to May of 2021, suggesting that the sector had recovered almost half (46 percent) of pre-pandemic 2019 levels.
Meanwhile, Hodes believes that while this was positive news for global tourism activity, risks remained to hit the sector.
Furthermore, the pandemic triggered a large number of retrenchments, which led to workforce constraints as demand climbed.
Moreover, heightened inflation, aggravated by the war in Ukraine, has increased the cost of travelling with jet fuel prices rising notably.
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