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I will today submit an official complaint to the Tourism Complaints Officer, Mirriam Setwaba, to investigate and address the Department of Home Affairs’ draconian visa regulations which are set to come into force on 1 June 2015.

This follows today’s meeting of the Home Affairs Portfolio Committee, in which I put forward the DA’s submissions on the regulations, and the negative impact they will have on the tourism industry.

The new visa regulations will require parents entering South Africa to provide an unabridged birth certificate of all travelling children. In addition, South Africans and foreigners have to provide details of the child's father and mother. This applies even when both parents are travelling with their children.

A child denied boarding by an airline ultimately means a family cannot travel and, by industry estimates, until traveller awareness is 100%, tourist arrivals to South Africa could be negatively impacted by up to 20%. Based on 2013 numbers, 536 000 foreign visitors could be denied travel.

These regulations will have a massive adverse impact on the already struggling tourism industry. Minister Hanekom recently revealed that between 2012 and 2014, both domestic tourism numbers and revenue generated have declined. Domestic tourism numbers dropped from, 12.5 million to 9 million, and revenue generated fell from R 21.8 billion to R 18.5 billion     

The tourism industry contributes 9% of our GDP and employs 1.5 million South Africans. Its growth and success is vital to growing our economy and creating jobs for the 36% of South Africans who cannot find work.

Thus the Tourism Complaints Officer must address the following with regards to the regulations:

• Whether such onerous regulations are international best practice;
• Which other countries have instituted similar regulations and what impact has this had;
• Whether a proper economic and regulatory impact assessment was undertaken prior to the regulations being drafted; and
• Why there were no formal engagements with any tourism industry associations.

If government fails to heed the concerns of the industry, we run the risk of losing international visitor interest in our country. If tourism numbers continue to dwindle, the sector will be forced to shed thousands of jobs. I will therefore be closely monitoring the responses from the Tourism Complains Officer

Issued by DA