15.1% more arrivals in South Africa in 2010 compared to 2009

South Africa's Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk announced some more tourism stats for 2010 in a media briefing at Parliament on 01 March 2011.

• South Africa saw a total of 8 073 552 arrivals in 2010
• it was only 7.3 Mio between Jan and Nov 2010, so South Africa welcomed another 700 000 visitors in Dec 2010. Not bad!
• that is an increase by 15.1% compared to 2009 (7 011 865 arrivals)
• UNWTO estimates global tourism arrivals to have grown by 6.7% in 2010

The Top 10 overseas markets for 2010:

1. UK + 1,5% -  from 446 369 to 453 030
2. USA + 22,6% -  from 230 324 to 282 377
3. Germany + 24,7% - from 194 034 to 242 028
4. The Netherlands + 8,4% - from 114 431 to 124 088
5. France + 14,4% - from 100 890 to 115 401
6. Australia + 30,4% - from 82 753 to 107 905
7. India + 29,7% - from 55 203 to 71 587
8. China + 90,7% - from 34 561 to 65 920
9. Canada + 21,9% - from 45 330 to 55 263
10. Italy + 8,6% - from 50 303 to 54 641

The Top 5 arrivals from African markets:

1. Zimbabwe + 137,3% - from 1 227 631 to 2912 957
2. Lesotho +  21,7% - from 1 048 550 to 1 275 838
3. Mozambique +  6,9% - from 983 739 to 1 051 502
4. Swaziland - 0,6% - from 636 593 to 632 490
5. Botswana + 4,7% - from 484 258 to 507 042

South Africa Tourism Report Q2 2009

just some quite interesting data... (year - on - year data)

# of foreign arrivals in South Africa + 5.5%
# of arrivals from Africa + 7%
# of arrivals from Europe - 0.5%
# of arrivals from North America + 4%
# of arrivals from Asia - 8%
Arrivals from Australasia, Central and South America, and the Middle East, all recorded relatively strong growth rates.

Within Europe, tourist arrivals from the UK (which accounted for over 34% of all European arrivals) fell 2.5% y-o-y, while German visitors declined a sizeable 6.5% y-o-y, and visitors from France were up a strong 11.2% y-o-y (after growth of almost 9% y-o-y in 2007). Looking at data for the month of December 2008 however, apart for Central and South America, Middle East and Africa, all the other regions recorded negative y-o-y growth in arrivals. Indeed, the number of visitors from Europe was down over 5% compared with the same month in 2007.

Hospitality Industry:
# of tourist (foreign and domestic) room nights in all accommodation establishments 20.6mn (+6.7% compared to 2007)
hotel occupancy rates averaged some 59.9% (2008)

more on http://www.companiesandmarkets.com/Summary-Market-Report/South-Africa-Tourism-Report-Q2-2009-80072.asp