Visas: South Africa to iron out glitches

 South Africa is seriously looking into the possibility of increasing the number of visa centres and adding more staff in India and China, two major tourism earners for the country.

Speaking at the Global Media Faceoff held as part of INDABA 2014, billed as Africa’s top travel show, South Africa (SA) Tourism CEO Thulani Nzima said, “The role of destination marketers is made more difficult by governments and travel organisations not understanding the negative effect of exorbitant visa costs and poor facilitation. Globally, visas remain a big issue for most travellers.”

He was referring to recent troubles Indian and Chinese travelers had to face because of South Africa’s inability to issue visas due to staff shortages. With just two visa centres in India and limited staff, South Africa is struggling to process visa applications out of India.

Nzima confirmed that these issues are being dealt with via bilateral discussions with Department of Home Affairs and the Department of International Relations and Cooperation but more work needs to be done to improve visa facilitation and travel to South Africa.

The route to further success, according to Nzima, lies in diversification of not only South Africa’s target market focus, but also variegating the offerings presented to these markets in terms of experiences. He also stressed on the importance of South Africa’s people, culture, heritage and lifestyle tourism offerings as key to sustaining awareness and leading to conversion.

 This new focus, supported by SA Tourism’s marketing strategies and campaigns for the next year, is of particular importance to markets showing exponential growth — Brazil, India, China — and countries within the Africa region.

“If all African countries come together and offer common visas for travellers, it would be a great booster for tourism in this part of the world and added attraction for tourists,” he added.

It is estimated that South Africa will receive over 13.5 million tourists by 2015, an increase of 4.8 per cent in tourism demand. The steady rise in South Africa’s popularity as a tourist destination means that South African Rand 318.2 billion will be brought in by the tourism industry alone by 2015.

Indian interest in South Africa’s tourism market has grown steadily. India is currently the third largest source market for the country from the Australasia region after China and Australia. In 2013, 1,12,672 Indian tourists visited South Africa, an increase of 5.5 per cent over 2012.


Last year, SA Tourism organised a training programme for South African chefs in preparing Indian food, especially vegetarian and Jain cuisine. Nearly 6,000 chefs participated in the programme.

This year, South Africa will launch a bigger campaign in India with former cricketer Jhonty Rhodes as brand ambassador. The campaign will be titled ‘Take Me to South Africa.’

(This correspondent was in South Africa at the invitation of South Africa Tourism)