Despite the successful rollout of the Trusted Tour Operator Scheme last year and the initial phases of the Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) for several Asian markets, South Africa’s key source markets of India and China continue to underperform.
According to Statistics South Africa’s January 2026 arrival figures, Asia remains the weakest recovering region when comparing pre-COVID data with arrivals down 37,6% compared with January 2019 and declining 6,8% year on year.
Speaking at a media briefing during Meetings Africa 2026, Minister of Tourism Patricia de Lille said she has been engaging with her Chinese counterpart for the past two years to address barriers to travel.
De Lille said to the Minister in China: “At least one billion Chinese people travel around the world every year. I just want 1% of that.” You need to look at the reasons, she added.
Visas and airlift
De Lille said visa processing has been identified as the first major obstacle with some tourists previously waiting up to a year for approval.
“We’ve now finally solved the visa problem for India, China, Indonesia and Mexico. During G20, we tested the ETA and it was running smoothly. We are now going to do a campaign in China to promote the new system.”
Airlift is the second major challenge. De Lille said she has engaged with Chinese airlines about launching direct flights to South Africa and also alluded to SAA obtaining fifth freedom rights to operate services to China. She said the airline would service the route with a stopover in Hong Kong.
Digital marketing
The third priority, according to De Lille, is a better understanding of the Chinese traveller and more targeted marketing. “You need to inspire them to come by showing them the diversity of tourism offerings that we have. But, during my last visit to China, I also realised the value of digital technology – people do everything on their phones.”
She has instructed SA Tourism’s offices in Beijing and Shanghai to appoint local destination marketing companies to strengthen in-market digital reach and relevance.
Deeper issues
Tshifhiwa Tshivhengwa, CEO of the Tourism Business Council of South Africa, said weak performance in the India and China markets points to deeper structural issues.
“If we want to see growth in India and China, we’ve got to do something extraordinary,” he said, adding that a proper diagnostic of the two markets is needed to understand what has gone wrong.
“What have we done in the past two years? Because the results that are coming in now are indicative of what we didn’t or did do in the past two years. It’s not the things that we did yesterday that are bringing the numbers down.”
Tshivhengwa warned that South Africa is not top of mind in either market and that incremental growth from other key source markets would not be enough to meet national targets.
“If we want to reach 15 million tourists by 2030 coming to South Africa, these are the two markets we need to pay attention to: India and China. The rest of the markets are going to grow marginally but, if we don’t grow these two markets, we’re not going to get close.”
