In a statement issued on Thursday, August 7, the Tourism Business Council of South Africa (TBCSA) has bemoaned the outcome of a recent meeting between the Ministers of Tourism and Home Affairs.
The ministers met exactly a week prior to discuss the introduction of the new immigration regulations for children and people travelling into and out of South Africa. The joint statement issued by the ministers after the meeting can be read here.
The council said it acknowledged the meeting “as having paved the way for the travel and tourism trade to engage with Government on the practicalities of implementation”
However, TBCSA CEO, Mmatšatši Ramawela expressed disappointment that it did not yield “significant changes to government’s stance on the two regulations which are of serious concern to the local and international tourism trade”. These regulations are the requirement for all children under the age of 18 exiting or entering the country to carry a copy of their unabridged birth certificates and the requirement for visa applications to be made in person for biometric processing.
The TBCSA said the new rules will add a new layer of red tape and administrative hurdles for inbound and outbound travellers, which may result in increased costs, extended travel time and dent South Africa’s reputation as a preferred tourism destination internationally.
“We are hugely concerned that the new regulations will make SA to be considered inaccessible to an increased number of visitors. Already with the previous immigration regulations, the trade had experienced difficulties in getting visa applications processed in some of our key source markets and we feel that the challenges will increase with the new onerous measures introduced by the Home Affairs Department,” said Ramawela.
The TBCSA welcomed the piloting of the ‘trusted traveller programme’ and the possible phasing out of the transit visa but warned that the biometric system also had its own flaws and may not be the right solution to replace the transit visa.
“Of course we are disappointed that the meeting did not yield the results we had hoped for. However the ministers did highlight their commitment to addressing the practical barriers to the implementation through ongoing engagement, so we remain optimistic”, said Ramawela.
In view of the Home Affairs Minister’s commitment to further engage on the matter, the TBCSA will be following up on its initial request to meet with Minister [Malusi] Gigaba. The council hopes the trade will have the opportunity to present the results of a recent study it commissioned to assess the ‘impact of the new regulations on the travel and tourism sector’. The study, which has a specific focus on the two areas of concern, also presents information on the possible impact on South Africa’s GDP with a special focus on job creation and the destination’s competitiveness.
“With the support of the Department of Tourism, we look forward to meeting with Minister Gigaba to present our concerns and engage on the specific details of implementation. In our initial letter to Minister Gigaba, we made amongst others a request for a 12-month moratorium on implementation to give the trade time to communicate with its partners both locally and internationally,” said Ramawela.
She explained that the extension would give the trade time to engage with government to ensure that all key source markets are well served with the required resources to implement the new regulations.
“The TBCSA will keep reaching out to Government to engage and to find a solution that will be agreeable to both sides, in the interest of South Africa’s travel and tourism economy which contributes no less than 10 percent to the country’s GDP ” Ramawela concluded.
