Cape Town - The good news is that tourism migration data published by Statistics SA show a significant rebound in overseas tourist arrivals to South Africa in May, despite not being the tourist season.
The data show overseas tourist arrivals increased 8.1% month on month in May, after falling 4.4% in April.
Arrivals this May were about 1.4 times those in May last year, indicating a relatively robust pace of recovery.
However, Absa economist Miyelani Maluleke said the bad news was that tourist arrivals were still 18.6% lower compared with pre-pandemic levels, or the fourth quarter of 2019.
Meanwhile, the data published by Stats SA last week showed that business income in the accommodation sector in April this year was about 23% below pre-pandemic levels.
Maluleke warned: “Looking ahead, the strength of the global economy and sentiment around South Africa amid ongoing electricity supply challenges may affect the pace of recovery in the tourism industry.”
Meanwhile, even as employment in the formal non-agricultural sectors of the economy, as shown by the Quarterly Employment Survey, contracted by 21 000 jobs in the first quarter of the year, FNB senior economist Koketso Mano saw positives in the data for the food and beverage sector.
“Employment growth in restaurants and hotels continues to improve, recording 0.7% quarter on quarter and 12.8% year on year, highlighting the ongoing recovery in tourism,” he said.
Even as the tourists return, fears have been expressed in the province that inaction by the Department of Home Affairs on long-standing technological challenges with E-Gates at Cape Town International Airport could prove to be a weak link.
The gates form part of implementing the department’s Biometric Movement Control System.
Using fingerprint technology, they facilitate the movement of low-risk travellers through a self-service solution, freeing capacity for assessing high-risk categories by an immigration officer.
However, Standing Committee on Finance, Economic Opportunities and Tourism chairperson Cayla Murray said: “The e-Gates at Cape Town International Airport are plagued by ICT interfacing problems that have rendered them virtually useless.”
Murray had asked Finance and Economic Opportunities MEC Mireille Wenger about the challenges with the system at the airport.
Wenger said the e-Gates could be used only by South African passport holders, and the Department of Home Affairs did not have the capacity to manage the e-Gates, leaving it to the Airports Company South Africa to facilitate this process at immigration.
Wenger said most of the challenges are related to IT integration challenges with the interface to the Department of Home Affairs IT systems.
“This results in erratic process times and read errors at the gates,” she said.
Murray said: “The use of e-Gates was supposed to revolutionise passenger processing, slashing queues and reducing turnaround times. But here’s the catch – international passport holders are being blatantly excluded from this supposed convenience.”
Murray has written to the Department of Home Affairs about the issue but has yet to receive a response.
mwangi.githahu@inl.co.za