SOUTH AFRICA: Millions Of South Africans Shun Travelling

Four million South Africans stopped travelling in 2014 compared to 2013, Statistics South Africa revealed in its report on domestic travel.

Stats SA said its study found that the number of day trips decreased from 54 million in 2013 to 48 million in 2014, while overnight trips decreased from about 51 million in 2013 to 47 million in 2014.

In 2013, 5.8 million day trips were taken in December and 5.5 million in January, while in 2014, 5.4 million day trips were taken in December and 4.2 million in 2014.

Domestic tourism spend did increase from R104bn in 2013 to R109bn in 2014. Day spend increased from R35bn in 2013 to R39bn in 2014, while overnight trips increased by about R5bn from 2013 to 2014.

“An increase has been witnessed for all categories of expenses in both overnight trips and day trips in the two periods,” Stats SA explained. “The only exception is money spent on domestic transport (down by R1bn) and recreation and culture during daytrips (down by R599m).”

In both 2013 (R19bn) and 2014 (R24bn), the biggest amount of money spent during day trips was on shopping. Two-thirds of the total spent during overnight trips in both 2013 and 2014 were spent on domestic transport (R22bn and R24bn respectively), Stats SA said.

Over one-fifth of total day trips in 2014 were trips to Gauteng and nearly 15% of trips were to Limpopo and Western Cape respectively.

In all provinces except Western Cape, the main purpose of taking overnight trips was to visit friends and relatives. “Tourists mostly travelled to Western Cape for leisure purposes, but visiting friends and relatives was the second most commonly stated purpose for visiting this province,” Stats SA said.

Day travellers travelled mainly for the purpose of shopping (5.2 million) and for visiting friends and relatives (4.8 million), Stats SA said.