Not to harp on about the World Cup, or anything, but a survey undertaken during the month-long tournament which highlighted the economic potential of the local tourism industry is very good news indeed.

The results, released on 19 September, were conducted with face-to-face interviews and showed that 89% of tourists found South Africans to be “extremely welcoming”. The survey, which also focused on related areas of interest, such as safety, public transport and the hospitality industry, covered the Western Cape, Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, Free State and Mpumalanga provinces.

Very encouraging is the fact that 70% of of tourists felt safe in South Africa, while 26.4% believed they were very safe. Only 3.8% felt they were somewhat unsafe and many commented that the reality was very different from what they had been led to expect.

And it would seem that fears that World Cup tourists would be over-charged were unfounded – some 45% found prices, especially at restaurants, to be cheaper than in their own countries. Only 6.8% of tourists thought prices were higher in South Africa.

The majority of respondents also said that their best experiences were experienced touring the country, rather than watching their favourite teams play. Only 23.5% of the visitors found watching their national team and the general World Cup experience to be the highlight of their trip – the majority found activities such as whale-watching and games drives to be their most memorable experiences.

On a negative note, however, more than 75% of respondents said South Africa needs to improve its public transport systems, with related complaints being the potholes in certain roads, untarred routes, congested traffic in Johannesburg and expensive private taxi fares. No surprise there!
The survey has shown us that the potential of South Africa’s tourism sector to spur economic growth remains impressive and that with more aggressive marketing overseas and single-minded determination, South Africa will be able to compete effectively with other long-haul destinations such as Australia.