Pretoria - Nearly one million tourists visited South Africa in December 2013, with most of the tourists coming from the SADC region, said Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) on Tuesday.

“A total of 937 792 tourists visited South Africa during December 2013, making it the highest ever recorded number of tourists in the country in any one  month.

“This was an increase of 7.6% from the 871 774 tourists recorded in December 2012,” said Stats SA.

Statistician-General Pali Lehohla presented the findings of the Tourism and Migration Report for December 2013. The statistics of the report were derived from data routinely collected by immigration officers from the Department of Home Affairs. The data is collected at all the ports of entry/exit of the country.

Lehohla said that over two-thirds of all tourists to South Africa came from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, followed by those from overseas at 28% and about 2% from other countries on the continent.

Tourists from the SADC region mainly came into the country by road, while those from overseas and other African countries came mainly by air.

Zimbabwe led the top 10 list of SADC countries’ tourists visiting South Africa at 30.3%, followed by Lesotho at 18.9% and Mozambique at 15.8%.

The United Kingdom, the US and Germany were among the 10 leading overseas countries visiting South Africa in December 2013.

Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana led the list of the top 10 African countries visiting South Africa.
Generally, December attracts more tourists than any other month in the country.

Most of the tourists, who came to the country, were on holiday, while the report also found that most tourists were men, particularly from the overseas region.

The majority of tourists were aged between 15 and 64. – SAnews.gov.za