When the Department of Home Affairs announced the second phase of the TTOS last week, 45 vetted tour operators were added to the existing 65 enrolled when the programme launched in February.
In a statement, Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber said the programme resulted in 25 024 additional tourists from India and China “who would otherwise have been deterred by visa delays”.
“The visa issues that people experienced last year definitely made the Indian trade very cautious about selling South Africa and didn’t want to risk a repeat of that so they weren’t going to suddenly start selling South Africa blindly due to a system that wasn’t proven and had no track record,” he said.
Forward-looking data looks positive, he added. “Our numbers for July are up about 16% for 2025 compared to 2024 and the projected numbers for August will be more than double compared to 2024. The trend is thus going in the right direction.”
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