Tourism Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane says she is hopeful that the coming long weekend, as well as the Easter holidays, will attract tourists to the country and boost the ailing economy caused by the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown regulations.
As part of the Domestic Travel Activation Campaign, she visited Franschhoek in the Cape Winelands. Kubayi-Ngubane engaged with stakeholders to assess the impact of the pandemic on tourism businesses in the area.
She says she is confident that tourism numbers will pick up later in the year.
“What we are looking forward to and we do get that feedback as I interact with many establishments even here and across the country is that there is quite a lot of interest towards the end of the year there’s quite a lot of inquiries that are coming through and what we want to do from the South African tourism point of view and the department is to start looking those bookings.”
Reopening of airports
The Tourism Business Council of South Africa says it expects to see an increase in business following the reopening of five airports for international travel under the adjusted alert Level 1 lockdown.
“You know for us to recover, travelling is essential because our business is travel and we have proven over the past few months that this can be done safely. We do expect that there should be an increased movement of people and we may start to see the signs of recovery and may get even more people back at work, and we do hope that people take advantage at the specials and go out there and take their families out on vacation.”
Tshivengwa’s full interview in the audio clip below:
