South African Tourism is seeking to attract Indian travellers with customised packages to suit different requirements.

While the year 2016 saw a strong growth, it expects to see more than 1,00,000 visitors from India during the year. Preference for holidays in South Africa has been on the rise among Indian travellers over the past few years and is expected to continue in 2017.

New benchmark

“The year 2016 was a milestone year for us at South African Tourism in India and we are determined to set new benchmarks for the industry as well as ourselves by making 2017 bigger and better. Our internal target is to welcome more than 100,000 Indian visitors in 2017 and we couldn’t be more thrilled to work towards and achieve this target,” Hanneli Slabber, Country Manager India, South African Tourism, said.

Indians’ favourite

The Indian leisure visitor numbers to South Africa surged 21.7 per cent during 2016 to close at an arrivals figure of 95,377 as against 78,385 visitors in 2015 and continues to see buoyancy. It was ranked eighth among South Africa’s international source markets.

Hyderabad has been one of the most rapidly growing source markets driving tourist traffic to South Africa. Hyderabad is also pegged to have had more business related air travellers in comparison to Mumbai and Tiruvananthapuram as per a survey conducted by Leadcap Ventures and commissioned by Emirates Airlines in 2016.

The South Africa Tourism concluded the 7th edition of its annual travel trade training sessions in Hyderabad today aimed at equipping travel agents with tips to sell the destination. ‘Learn South Africa’ is a 17-city training programme which covered urban metros and tier II & III markets. Over 70 international airlines now fly into South Africa. Efforts are on to increase seat capacity on relevant flight routes ex-Hyderabad.

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