South Africa Aims To Provide Tourist Visa Within 5 Days

31 Jul 2015

The South African govt is considering a proposal to clear the tourist application in less than 5 days in order to boost tourist inflows from our nation, India.

Presently it takes about 5 days to complete the checks as well as balances to grant the tourist travel visa to the Indian applicants.

Hanneli Slabber, South Africa Tourism country head said, We have been communicating prior 15 days by the home department that they were finalizing a plan to complete all process involved in issuing tourist visa within 5 days.

The South Africa govt desires to boost tourism and this move would help the tourism sector, which previously affected by the outbreak of deadly Ebola in western and Central Africa. The nation was hit very badly by the Ebola outbreak during the previous year. Many tourist’s postponed their travel plans to the nation suddenly, with the help of cross border campaigns,  this nation is trying to carry the message that it is least affected by Ebola, added Hanneli Slabber.

Hanneli Slabber, tourist inflows to the nation have remained flattish, since last one year and it hopes to revive in coming 2 years as things have stabilized now.  As per the recent figures provided by the Tourism Board, the Indian tourist numbered 127,000 in 2013 and it is seventh largest market source market for the southern African nation. Presently, the UK is the largest source market with annual arrivals at 500,000.

The nation is  also expanding its “Learn South Africa Programme” for travel as well as tourism agents in India in order to improve its market positioning. The programme targets capacity building of 1600 agents this year, it covers 15 Indian cities.

She also said, with the sheer size of the Indian,  they have planned to localize the offering by engaging with local tourism operators and trade partners in South Africa to make the Indian cuisine widely available across various destination’s and sale of merchandise preferred by Indians. By 2020, she stated that, India would be the top source market for tourist arrivals to the nations.

However, she is of the opinion that, air connectivity still remains to be improved in order to draw greater inflows from India. With Mumbai-Seychelles-Johannesburg is routed daily from West Asian destination like Dubai and Abhu Dhabi . Slabber said the nation was in talks with Indian domestic airlines to start direct flights from major metros. We hope 5/20 rule is in place in India  and it will be relaxed thus making way for the private airlines to connect varied destination in South Africa, she added. 

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