Asian tourists compensate for EU fall
November 2, 2004
By Audrey D' Angelo
Cape Town - A steep rise in the number of visitors from mainland China helped to compensate for a drop in tourism from some of South Africa's traditional European source markets in August.
Figures released by Statistics SA yesterday showed that 152 544 visitors from overseas arrived in South Africa in August - a drop of 2.1 percent compared with the same month last year.
The drop was mainly in arrivals from Germany, which has been South Africa's second-largest source market for tourism, and from France and Spain.
Tourism authorities pointed out that the German economy was not doing well and that August was a month in which European holiday makers tended to visit their local resorts.
This year, the number of arrivals from Germany fell to 14 657 in August from 17 077 the year before. Arrivals from France fell to 8 924 from 10 390 and arrivals from Spain fell to 3 492 from 4 536.
But arrivals from the UK, Switzerland, Norway and Denmark were slightly up.
Arrivals from mainland China - identified by SA Tourism and SAA as a growth market - almost doubled to 4 450 from 2 672 despite a shortage of airline seats on the direct route from Hong Kong.
Japanese arrivals rose from 1 986 to 2 422; Taiwanese to 1 762 from 1 258; South Korean to 1 773 from 1 469; and Singaporean to 423 from 370.
This week Singapore Airlines introduces a non-stop service to Cape Town. Andrew Chee, the general manager of Singapore Airlines in the Cape, said half its passengers were Chinese and he expected their numbers to increase during the rest of the year.
Helder Perreira, the managing director of the Southern Sun hotel group, said it had noticed "a slight drop" in overseas guests in August, but the number at the end of July had been little different from the previous year.
"Some European markets, including Germany, dropped but this was made up for by arrivals from Asia.
"We do not expect a large number of visitors from Europe in August, at the end of our winter. There is nothing to worry about," Perreira said.
Onkgopotse JJ Tabane, the vice-president communications at SAA, said: "August was one of our best months ever for passengers from overseas."
Lufthansa, which introduced non-stop flights from Frankfurt to Cape Town in October, said these had average passenger loads of 81 percent. It planned to substitute larger Boeing 747-400s for the Airbus A340-300s on the Cape Town route in the peak holiday period to meet expected demand.
Juan-Pedro Aritio, the general manager of Spanish airline Iberia in southern Africa, said it had high passenger loads averaging 87 percent on its five flights a week to Johannesburg. It was using a larger Airbus A 340-600 to meet growing demand on the route.
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