Efforts to boost tourism in South Africa have seen significant gains as the Minister of Home Affairs, Dr Leon Schreiber, on Tuesday announced, that through the Trusted Tour Operator Scheme (TTOS) digital platform, 11 144 tourists from China and India obtained digital visas through the scheme in three months.
The department said that the volume of applications grew consistently from an average of 50 per day in March to 135 per day in April and to 210 per day in May thus far.
“These are tourists who otherwise would not have come to South Africa, given the challenges previously experienced with obtaining visas for tour groups from China and India,” the department stated.
The latest research facilitated by Operation Vulindlela showed that one new job is created for every 13 tourists who visit the country, suggesting that TTOS has already created 857 new tourism jobs since February with this one reform alone.
Under TTOS, the Department of Home Affairs partnered with 65 tour operators under a risk-sharing model that grants them access to a digital platform to submit and receive visa outcomes for tour groups from China and India.
Travellers from these major source markets, home to over 2.8 billion people, previously had to travel great distances to submit paper visa applications, the outcomes for which sometimes only arrived after their planes had already departed.
TTOS visas are now consistently delivered digitally through a secure online platform within a matter of hours.
Minister Schreiber, who conceptualised the scheme, said, “It is important to note that TTOS is still just a small-scale proof of concept. But after three months of operation, it is already clear that it has been a resounding success. TTOS has attracted over 11 000 additional tourists in this short time, working with just 65 partners. This amounts to almost a third of all tourists from China who visited South Africa last year. The success of TTOS demonstrates the enormous growth potential that we can unlock by rolling out a digital-only visa platform – not only for group travel from these 65 partners, but for every tourist in the world.”
Schreiber further added, “This is exactly what Home Affairs is building. In addition to shortly announcing a second intake of tour operators to further boost the number of group tours attracted through TTOS, we are on track to deliver a world-class Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) system this year. This system will completely digitalise and automate all tourism and short-stay visas, enabling every tourist on earth who wants to visit South Africa to instantly and securely obtain a digital visa. Not only will this eliminate fraud and inefficiency, but, as TTOS demonstrates beyond all doubt, it will amount to the single biggest reform to boost job creation in the tourism sector in decades.”
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