Visa 'red tape'and crime are deterring tourists from coming to SA – says Ramaphosa UNWTO launches preliminary report on Visa Openness in Africa

Visa 'red tape'and crime are deterring tourists from coming to SA – says Ramaphosa

President Cyril Ramaphosa

President Cyril Ramaphosa believes radically overhauling frustrating visa regulations and tackling crime will help grow SA's tourism industry. He was speaking at the final day of Africa’s Travel Indaba at the Durban International Convention Centre, where he received a rousing welcome from international and local delegates. The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) has published its preliminary Report on visa openness in Africa. The UN body made the report public during the first ICAO/UNWTO Ministerial Conference on Air Transport and Tourism in Africa held recently in Santa Maria, Sal Island in Cabo Verde. The 2019 Visa Openness Report for Africa continued the analysis of visa policies and progress made in visa facilitation over the past ten years, supporting destinations with evidence-based findings to support their decisions in prioritizing activities within their facilitation policies. Besides presenting the global perspective, the report gives specific insights into the temporary changes as well as current context with regard to visa policies implemented by Ramaphosa told hundreds of delegates that SA and Africa had to address and overcome a number of challenges in order to boost their respective tourism markets. Among the more pressing challenges, he said, was the need to "reduce the onerous and often unnecessary bureaucratic red tape that tourists who want to visit our countries face."

He said if tourists were held back by red tape, they would immediately give up and go to other destinations. "This clearly requires that we should streamline our tourist visa regimes and in South Africa we are committed to working towards the African Union’s goal of a visa free travel dispensation and a single African air transport market. "We are in the process of overhauling, in a very radical way, our visa dispensation, for the rest of the world and introducing a world class e-visa system." Ramaphosa said the other major challenge when it comes to tourism, is African economies and their impact on temporary visitors. In addition, the impact of visa policies implemented by countries of other regions on the citizens of African countries was also presented. The report revealed that while in 2008, 88% of the world’s population on average needed to obtain traditional visas when traveling to Africa, this changed in 2018 to 45%, demonstrating that countries in Africa have embraced the process on visa facilitation and making good progress in easing the process to make it more hassle free for the discerning traveler. However, more needs to the issue of crime.

"We must deal with another major challenge, a challenge which was well articulated to me by the president of China who said to me that many Chinese tourists want to come to South Africa and Africa, but the issue that is holding them back is crime. "He said, 'address crime and you will see millions of people from the Asian part of the world coming to South Africa and Africa with many dollars in

their hands'. "We have to deal with crime and counter the perception that Africa is an unsafe tourist destination."

He said it was imperative that resources be devoted to "tackling acts of criminality, particularly crimes that are committed against tourists". "My take is that we need more intergovernmental work so that all government departments focus on a national effort at promoting a growth industry such as tourism."

UNWTO launches preliminary report on Visa Openness in Africa

Credit: Timeslive.co.za be done so that Africa can benefit appreciably from a globally expanding tourism industry

Commenting on the preliminary report, the Secretary General of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) Ambassador Zurab Pololikashvili said, visa policies are among the most important governmental formalities influencing international tourism, and closely linked to the development of tourism. He mentioned that the UNWTO will continue to work with governments to encourage and support them in the implementation of their policies on visas.