While South African Tourism has highlighted that there is a growing increase in travellers from Africa, encouraging the tourism sector to tap into this market, many Tourism Update readers question the validity of these travellers to be categorised as ‘tourists’.

Economic development specialist, Adrienne Harris, had this to say:

“These statistics do not give anywhere close to a true picture. I think SA Tourism should contract primary research at all borders, especially the busiest land borders such as Beit Bridge (Zimbabwe), Ressano Garcia (Mozambique) and Maseru (Lesotho).

Unfortunately, even that will not give a complete picture – options such as ‘to find work’ and ‘access free health care’ will never be admitted.

These travellers will always mark ‘holiday’ as reason for entering the country. Getting this information is easier if an NGO is used as a facilitator, with assurances of anonymity (and could also help inform improvement of the facilities at these posts).

It would also be useful to separate regular traders from business travel. They do add great value to the greater economy, but little to the tourism economy.

The old saying, ‘if you can't measure it, you can't manage it’ is definitely valid in this instance.”