Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2019 - the Southern/East African countries!

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has released the biennial Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report (TTCR) 2019. It benchmarks the Travel & Tourism (T&) competitiveness of 140 economies and measures the set of factors and policies that enable the sustainable development of the T&T sector, which in turn, contributes to the development and competitiveness of a country.
Spain tops the 2019 edition of the TTCR global rankings for the third consecutive year, followed by France (#2) and Germany (#3). Japan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, Italy, Canada and Switzerland complete the Top 10.
The island of Mauritius is the highest-ranked Sub-Saharan African country in the Index on position #54 (regional #1). South Africa (#61, #2), which topped the previous regional ranking and fell eight places on the Index since 2017, is ranked second. The largest T&T industry in Sub-Saharan Africa is followed by the Seychelles (#62, #3), Namibia (#81, #4) and Kenya (#82, #5).

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South Africa (global #61, regional #2):

• positive: 
• the largest T&T industry in Sub-Saharan Africa
  
• most significant advantage is its combination of natural (15th) and cultural resources (23rd)
• boasts a decent business environment (57th)
• beats regional benchmarks regarding human resources and labour (81st), 
• beats regional benchmarks regarding ICT readiness (75th)
• beats regional benchmarks regarding overall infrastructure (60th) 
• increased number of world heritage sites (16th to 13th)  
• upward revision for protected land (100th to 74th
  

• negative:
• one of the worst safety and security environments (132nd) in the world 
• plagued by high homicide rates (135th),  
• significant impact of crime on business (131st) 
• increasing fears of terrorism 
• poor health and hygiene conditions (113th) 
• scores low on the Environmental Sustainability pillar (124th)  
• significant deforestation (124th) 
• declining environmental enforcement and regulatory stringency (46th to 66th)
• declines in the attractiveness of its natural assets (6th to 32nd) 
• worsening business environment (30th to 54th) 
• impact of taxes on incentives to work and invest (48th to 78th) 
• Government prioritization of tourism  slipped from 40th to 75th  
• apparent reduction on marketing effectiveness (40th to 60th) 
• apparent reduction on overall country brand strategy (5th to 23rd)
•  declining quality of tourist service infrastructure (6th to 32nd) 
• lower level of primary education enrollment 
• broad drops in training and customer orientation metrics
  

• conclusion: 
• If the South Africa can maintain its lead on natural and cultural resources and infrastructure, and reverse recent losses in areas related to enabling environment — particularly indicators on safety — it will be able to remain one of Sub-Saharan Africa’s key tourism economies.

Southern & Eastern African countries in the Travel &Tourism Competitiveness Report and Index 2019*:

01. Mauritius (global #54)
02. South Africa (#61)
03. Seychelles (#62)
04. Namibia (#81)
05. Kenya (#82)
06. Cape Verde (#88)
07. Botswana (#92)
08. Tanzania (#95)
09. Senegal (#106)
10. Rwanda (#107)
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12. Uganda (#112)
13. Zambia (#113)
14. Zimbabwe (#114)
16. Eswatini (#118)
18. Ethiopia (#122)
20. Lesotho (#124)
21. Malawi (#125)
23. Mozambique (#127)
29. Angola (#134)