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Record highs for SA tourism

World Tourism Day was celebrated on 27 September 2006. In figures taken from January to April, and compared to the same period last year, the number of foreign visitors to South Africa has increased by377 000 (16 percent). For the first time ever, there have been more than 2.7 million tourists to South Africa in the first four months of the year.

Observers have put this sudden increase down to international awareness of the 2010Football World Cup. As evidence of this, the number ofBrazilian tourists has increased by 32 percent. On World Tourism Day, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, the Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, announced that a number of workshops and conferences will be held to ensure that the World Cup will be a success and that South Africans will be able to take advantage of the massive overseas market at the time.

The Minister concluded his speech by stating that ‘with our initial figures as they are, South Africa looks set to eclipse last year's record tourism figure of7.3 million.’