South African tourism businesses are hopeful that the appointment of Trusted Tour Operator Scheme (TTOS) will result in the surge of international tourists from India and China, two of the world’s most populated countries, as the scheme accelerates the visa applications process.

This comes after the Department of Home Affairs today announced the selection of 65 participants in its TTOS, which is aimed at boosting tourism from China and India in a bid to create jobs.

The scheme was gazetted by the department at the end of October last year, just two months after work began following consultations with the tourism sector and the Minister of Tourism about the way in which visa inefficiency and red tape throttles South Africa’s ability to attract more tourists from these two burgeoning source markets.

Research indicates that boosting tourism by only 10% per year can increase annual economic growth by 0.6% and create thousands of new jobs for South Africans.

Leon Schreiber, Minister of Home Affairs, today said that the participants included some of the biggest industry players in China, India and South Africa.

Among the 65 selected major tour operators are Thomas Cook India, China International Travel Service, MakeMyTrip India, Shangai CTRIP International Travel Service, Springbok Atlas Tours and Safaris, SOTC Travel, Kesari Tours, and Beijing Caissa Sunho International Travel Service.

The selected TTOS participants are signing agreements with Home Affairs that will hold the companies liable for any misrepresentation or transgressions committed by their clients.

In exchange for taking on this risk, companies affiliated with TTOS will benefit from reduced red tape, including to overcome language barriers, as well as faster turnaround times when applying for visitors’ visas for their clients.

“The conceptualisation and rollout of TTOS within the space of a few months demonstrates the commitment of Home Affairs to delivering on the apex priority of the Government of National Unity, which is to increase economic growth and create jobs,” Schreiber said.

“Our foremost goal remains the total digital transformation of all Home Affairs processes, including the application, adjudication and communication of visa outcomes, which will altogether eliminate visa delays as an obstacle to tourism. In the interim until we reach that goal, we will use TTOS as a key programme to catalyse further growth and job creation in the South African tourism sector.”

At the moment, Indian tourists account for only 3.9% of all international visitors to South Africa – and Chinese tourists for only 1.8%. Chinese travellers made over 100 million outbound trips in 2023, with South Africa receiving only 93 000 of these arrivals. In comparison, a country like Australia attracted over 1.4 million visitors from China in 2023.

TTOS aims to increase these numbers by leveraging the same model of collaboration and risk-sharing used by Home Affairs’ Trusted Employer Scheme (TES), which has already securely boosted the flow of high-end skills into large companies.

Tshifhiwa Tshivhengwa, CEO of the Tourism Business Council of South Africa (TBCSA), said the Home Affairs announcement was a very critical development for the sector as it would realise the ambition to grow in China and the Indian markets.

Tshivhengwa said the remaining task now was to do proper marketing, to organise the Indian markets, to make sure that Home Affairs is on top of mind from an awareness point of view, and to make sure that they work with those two operators to come through to South Africa.

“What was the problem in the Indian and Chinese markets was the length of time it took for one to get visa to come from Africa. What this does is it shortens the time, and it makes the whole thing, depending on the operators, open up the information, because they are credited, they are able to get visa faster. That is what will result in the amount of time it takes to get a visa,” he said.

“This is going to cut the time it takes when people apply for visa, meaning that there’s going to be more appetite for tourists who come to South Africa because it's easier to get a visa. This means that we are now on par with the likes of Australia, who have had their trusted operators in for quite a number of months and years.

“What we want to see is us getting the Indian market to the level of the US market and the UK market. We want those two markets to get into at least 500 000 tourists and over time, we should be able to get at least a million tourists coming from India and a million tourists coming from China by 2035. If we can get a million from China and a million from India, I can tell you we will create jobs.”

BUSINESS REPORT