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The provided image is a vertical bar chart titled "SA’s tourist arrivals hit a decade high in 2025," which tracks South Africa's annual tourist numbers from 2016 to 2025. The chart uses a stacked bar design to distinguish between Overseas tourists (dark blue at the bottom) and African tourists (light blue on top), with the total combined figure labeled above each bar. The data reveals a significant pre-pandemic peak of 10.5 million in 2018, followed by a sharp decline during 2020 and 2021 due to global travel restrictions. A strong recovery phase is shown starting in 2022, culminating in 2025 where arrivals returned to the 10.5 million mark. The chart specifically highlights that this recent growth has been driven primarily by African travelers, who made up 8.1 million of the total arrivals in 2025, compared to 2.4 million from overseas.
Date 29 January 2026
Category Economy & Business
Tags TourismSouth AfricaAfricaOverseasbusiness
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South Africa recorded its strongest tourism year in a decade in 2025.

Between January and December 2025, 10.5-million tourists visited the country. Most visitors travelled to South Africa for leisure, providing a significant boost to local businesses and the hospitality sector.

But what the overall numbers don’t show is that the main driver of the growth is arrivals from African countries, particularly the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Tourists coming from SADC countries grew by 6% compared with 2019 numbers, but overseas tourist arrivals are still 8% lower than the pre-Covid numbers.

Tourism Business Council of South Africa CEO Tshifhiwa Tshivhengwa criticised state-funded SA Tourism, which is responsible for promoting South Africa abroad, “[SA Tourism] receives a huge chunk of money to market South Africa to international markets, but we are still not back to pre-Covid levels in terms of overseas arrivals.”