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The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound effect on the tourism sector.

Governments across the globe had to close borders to limit the spread of the virus, depriving the industry of foreign tourists that would ordinarily contribute significantly to the economy.

In South Africa, the hard lockdown took a massive toll on thousands of businesses and industry workers. Hoteliers large and small closed establishments, attractions were shut for long periods of time, and airlines had to cease operations.

While eased lockdown restrictions allowed some sectors of the industry to resume operations as the months went on, many were unable to claw back lost revenue, and the effects are still being felt.

The addition of a mutation of the COVID-19 virus, 501Y.V2, which was commonly referred to as “the South African variant”, didn’t do us any favours by, as Bloomberg puts it, turning “the country into an international pariah”.

The impact of this is far-reaching. As Lee-Anne Bac, an adviser to the industry for consultancy BDO put it, “who wants to make a booking somewhere they aren’t allowed to go?”

Before the pandemic, tourism contributed 7% to South Africa’s GDP, which is below the global average but still accounted for around 1,5 million jobs. In a country where jobs are in short supply, that number matters.

Apart from a complete shutdown during the hard lockdown, the continued intermittent bans on the sale and on-site consumption of alcohol have put a dent in operations with annual food and beverage income down 41%, compared with a 2,4% growth in 2019.

The volume of domestic tourism has grown, as most of us now have an uncomfortable relationship with the same four walls that we’ve been staring at over the past year. Work is home and home is work, and a break from it all needs to be found elsewhere.

As such the decline in revenue from accommodation recovered as 2020  went on, but was still significantly lower by year-end (by 61%) than the previous year.

We’re looking at the possibility of a return to alert level 2 at some stage soon, to get ahead of the possible large gatherings and events over the Easter weekend.

This will be another blow for the sector, which usually marks holidays as one of its busiest periods.

[source:bloomberg]