South African Tourism Annual Report 2021/2022
Loading...
Date
2022
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
National Department of Tourism, South Africa
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the greatest health, economic and social crises of our time. It broughtunprecedented disruption, with a massive drop in travel, resulting from a global lockdown and widespread travel restrictions. Tourism was one of the most affected sectors, with businesses and livelihoods around the world severely impacted. This set unprecedented challenges for the global travel and tourism market. However,the introduction of vaccinations against COVID-19 proved to be good news for the travel industry. The approval of various vaccines and subsequent vaccination of 50% of the world’s population with at least one vaccination dose toward, resulted in a significant easing of travel restrictions, which contributed to the revitalisation of international travel.
The lifting of travel bans following the introduction of vaccinations against COVID-19 led to a slight improvement in global and domestic travel during the period under review. However, South Africa’s position on the “red list” of many countries continued to impact on international arrivals. The organisation’s marketing activities therefore had to focus on cementing the message that the country is ready to welcome visitors once international borders are open again.
As of 1 November 2021, only 52% of worldwide destinations were requesting negative COVID-19 tests at points of entry. This is an improvement on the 35% recorded at the same time in 2020. Despite this, the borders of 21% of countries were still completely closed, while 25% were partially closed. Only 2% of countries had lifted all COVID-19 travel restrictions. Although 39% of countries had eased restrictions for fully COVID-19-vaccinated individuals, another
9% had made a full COVID-19 vaccinationmandatory. This impacted on South African Tourism’s performance and its ability to meet its targets.
General financial review: With total assets exceeding liabilities by R228 million and a net current asset position of R 175 million, SA Tourism has sufficient cash reserves in the bank to meet its obligations as they become due, the entity is a going concern. For the period ending 31 March 2022 the entity incurred total audited expenditure to the value of 1.3 billion of which 910 million was spent on marketing expenditure with the greater share going toward leisure tourism.
Requests for roll over of funds; National Treasury approved the roll-over of approved capital expenditure and bid support commitments. These commitments were audited by the Auditor General of South Africa in the preceding financial year.
Supply chain management: During the year under review, SA Tourism continued to strengthen its supply chain environment through the Bid Adjudication Committee, the Bid Evaluation Committees and the Bid Specification Committees. The work of the procurement committees was guided by the Board approved Annual Procurement Plan, which was monitored by the Bid AdjudicationCommittee, the ExCo and the SA Tourism Board.
Description
Keywords
Annual reports, South Africa, South African tourism