By World Economic Forum | for Moakanyi Magazine
International tourism is a complex sector that covers travel related to both business and leisure and that has multiple backward and forward linkages into diverse sectors of the economy.
When tourists spend time outside their home country, they are considered to consume tourism services abroad. By its very nature, therefore, international tourism involves the export and import of services.7 Global tourism demand has increased in recent years as reflected in increased numbers of international travellers and increased receipts from international tourism activities.
According to the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report of 2019, Southern Africa is the most competitive of the three subregions, but experienced slow growth in competitiveness over the past two years.
While the region has improved since the 2017 edition of the report, Sub-Saharan Africa ranks at the bottom of the TTCI, lagging behind the rest of the world across all pillars, with only Mauritius, South Africa and Seychelles scoring above the global average on the index.
At the same time, however, the region continues to outpace the global average in international tourism arrivals and receipts growth: the World Travel and Tourism Council forecasts Africa economies covered by this year’s TTCI to have the second highest rate of growth in T&T GDP in the ten years from 2019–2029.
As a result, if the region manages to pick up the pace of improvement, investors will be more likely view the region as an attractive investment opportunity to diversify away from more mature markets.
In 2019, it outperforms the broader regional average on 11 pillars. The subregion is also the most price-competitive in Sub-Saharan Africa, which is also its highest-ranking pillar.
However, Southern Africa’s biggest advantages over the other two subregions come from tourist services infrastructure and prioritization of travel & tourism, though the subregion does perform below the global average in both areas.
Southern Africa’s growth over its 2017 performance consisted of broad improvement in T&T-related policies and enabling conditions, especially price competitiveness and international openness.
ICT readiness and tourist service infrastructure also improved, but this subregion’s traditional lead in overall enabling environment and natural and cultural resources deteriorated.
In particular, Southern Africa’s Health and Hygiene pillar worsened, reinforcing the subregion’s greatest disadvantage compared to the global average. Southern Africa’s growth is primarily due to the performance of Lesotho, which moved up four places in 2019 to a global rank of 124th.
The country experienced jumps in price competitiveness (57th to 10th) and international openness (129th to 107th), caused by the lowest ticket and airport charges in the world as well as reduced visa requirements (110th to 28th).
Three of the five other countries in Southern Africa that were ranked in 2017 lost places on the TTCI. Botswana experienced the subregion’s largest decline, dropping seven places to rank 92nd globally due to a worsened enabling environment (83rd to 99th), infrastructure (89th to 99rd) and natural and cultural resources (70th to 67th).
The lowest ranking member of Southern Africa is Angola (134th), ranking near the bottom on most pillars. However, South Africa (61st) currently accounts for approximately 70% of Southern Africa’s T&T GDP and is the subregion’s highest scorer on the TTCI, with a particularly strong lead over the countries in the rest of the region in areas related to cultural resources & business travel (23rd).
Numbers of international travellers have gone up everywhere in the first decade of this century, but the increase has been sharpest in the low-income destination countries.
Developed countries remain both the major tourism destinations and source of international tourism, but developing countries have been reducing the gap.
Source: World Economic Forum
