South Africa's tourism figures shoot up
Updated | By Nushera Soodyal
The number of people who visited South Africa in the first half of the year doubled compared to the same period last year.
According to Stats SA, more than four million tourists arrived in the country between January and June.
The figure was 2.3 million for the first six months of 2022.
Department of Tourism spokesperson Zara Nicholson says they are happy with the 78.2% surge even though the country is operating at 80% of its pre-pandemic capacity.
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Nicholson says out of the 4 million arrivals, just over 3 million were from African countries.
"We have welcomed visitors from other regions; Australia, New Zealand. We saw an increase of 141% where we had over 50 000 visitors coming from that region compared to 21 000 in the previous year.
"Europe was the largest source of visitors outside of Africa where we also experienced growth with a 66.8% increase."
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