[imagesource: Reuters]

South Africa’s economy is losing out on more than R26 million every day, more than R180 million every week, and R790 million every month that the country remains on the UK’s travel ‘red list’.

The UK introduced the “traffic light” system that categorises countries according to COVID-19 risk analysis in May, so those figures really add up.

Travelling to the UK after being in a ‘red list’ country in the previous 10 days, regardless of vaccine status, is strictly limited to returning residents and citizens, who then need to quarantine for 10 days in a state-managed hotel.

And those quarantine costs are no joke.

The economic loss that SA is facing from these travel restrictions has been calculated according to a new study from the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) and based on 2019 UK visitor numbers and spending, per BusinessTech.

The tourism and migration data published by Statistics South Africa shows that travel restrictions saw the number of UK arrivals drop by 97% between April and December 2020, with less than 8 000 UK travellers arriving in SA during the first five months of 2021.

Business Insider SA notes that the total loss since being on the ‘red list’ has been well over R2,4 billion.

Virginia Messina, senior vice president of the WTTC, said that the UK’s ‘red list’ not only damages the Travel and Tourism sector of various countries but also impacts their overall economies.

She also mentioned how the pandemic has pushed many into poverty, which is one reason why restarting safe international travel and reducing mobility restrictions is crucial.

For this to happen, our government needs to speed up the vaccination programme considerably.

Even though anybody 18 and over is eligible for a vaccine starting from today, there are still too many people without the vaccine, which is slowing down the possibility of allowing safe international travel.

In the UK, more than half of all adults have been fully vaccinated.

The UK is especially important for SA, as according to the WTTC’s annual Economic Impact Report (EIR), in 2019, UK travellers accounted for 7% of international visitor spending in SA, which represented R9,4 billion.

South Africans wanting or needing to travel elsewhere still face strict travel restrictions in many other countries.

Skyscanner’s mapping tool can confirm that currently there are 86 ‘major restrictions’ from other countries towards South Africa.

But the main loss comes from the restrictions that are dissuading folks from travelling in and spending here.

We can hold onto some hope that this will all change soon, as the vaccine rollout should improve while some organisations are petitioning to have South Africa removed from the UK’s red list.

[sources:businesstech&businessinsider]