The technical challenges experienced by Statistics South Africa in data acquisition from the Department of Home Affairs have been resolved. Statistics South Africa has successfully received the backlog data and analysed them for the statistical releases. Since the write-up of the April to December 2014 Tourism and Migration statistical releases is completed, they will be published over   read more »

International visitors to South Africa bring much-needed foreign exchange. Dollars, euros and pounds are converted to rands and spent on tourism products like food, accommodation, recreation and transport. This helps drive domestic tourism-related activities within the country. There is often a lot of attention on the amount of money that non-resident visitors, comprising both tourists   read more »

Tourism has the potential to make a significant contribution to the South African economy and it is targeted by government as one of the industries for future economic growth in the country. Tourism therefore is regarded as a potential sector where large-scale employment opportunities can be created. The National Development Plan (NDP) 2030 also emphasises   read more »

After a drastic drop in tourist arrivals in 2020 and 2021, the volume of tourist arrivals in South Africa is showing improvement. The Tourism 2022 report released by Statistics South Africa shows that the volume of tourists dropped by 72,6% from 10 228 593 in 2019 to 2 802 320 in 2020 and declined by 19,5% between 2020 and   read more »

Even though 2020 seems like a lifetime ago, the true extent of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact is still being pieced together. The recent Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) for South Africa report1 sheds light on how the pandemic affected the tourism sector over the period January 2020 to December 2020, most notably in terms of production,   read more »

The tourism sector: economic importance, employment and expenditure. These are the three themes covered by a recent report examining the pre-pandemic (2019) status of the South African tourism sector. These data will provide an important benchmark for when comparable COVID-19-era data (2020) become available. The Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) for South Africa report, released annually,   read more »

According to the Tourism, 2020 report released by Statistics South Africa, foreign arrivals dropped by 71% from just over 15, 8million in 2019 to less than 5 million in 2020. It is evident that the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the tourism industry quite hard around the world and in South Africa, mainly due to the lockdown   read more »

  For immediate release                                                                                                                                                 1 April 2021 Statistics South Africa to   read more »

Media Release                                                                                                       28 April 2020 Statistics South Africa to use telephonic data collection for Quarterly Labour Force Survey (Q2) 2020 The lockdown and progression of the pandemic resulted in the discontinuation of face-to-face data collection on 19 March 2020. Further to this, Statistics South Africa’s (Stats SA) Executive Committee took a decision to suspend   read more »

Background The personal, social and economic impact of COVID-19 is unlike anything experienced by the world in the past 75 years. Stats SA is aware of the need for timely data to understand these impacts, but is equally constrained by the restrictions put in place to manage the spread of the coronavirus. The task of   read more »