Tourism recovery: Increase in 2025 overseas arrivals, but only US & Australia recover to pre-Covid levels

Statistics SA has revealed numbers that reflect significant growth for the tourism industry in 2025.

This is particularly for November, boosted by the G20 and B20 summits, and for the festive season over December.

While arrivals from January to December 2025 were up by around 17.7% compared to 2024, it's critical to also look at overseas arrivals which increased by about 11.9%, says Tshifhiwa Tshivengwa, CEO of the Tourism Business Council of South Africa (TBCSA).

Driving the upswing in the main is travel between the SADC countries, Tshivengwa points out.

"If you look at Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and Malawi; you see there are a whole lot more people who came from those countries to boost thes numbers. You could also pose the question whether this is pure travel or economic migration."

Yes, the international arrivals figures outside of the African continent may be up by almost 12%, but this is still below the 2019 or pre-COVID figure of about 2.6 million, he says.

Only two countries from the overseas point of view have recovered up to 100% from 2019 - the US at 104% and Australia 108%.

"The rest of the countries still lag behind - the UK still on 92%, Germany about 90%, France at 81%. If you look at China and India the numbers are even lower... We do have the momentum and we should - by way of us as the private sector getting involved - be able, by this year, to recover in these other critical markets."

In the high-season month of December, overseas tourists constituted 23,9% (238 561) of all visitors.

The UK (47, 634), Germany (33, 917) and the US (33,606) contributed 48,3% to overseas tourists.

Tshivengwa also looks at areas where government can still reduce red tape to encourage international tourism - take a listen in the interview audio at the top of the article