Tourist spending in South Africa has been gradually recovering since the 2020 pandemic, but a new study from the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and Excelia Business School in France suggests this rebound may be more fragile than it appears, with three decades of trend data pointing to deeper, structural challenges ahead.
Tourism recovery is mainly driven by South Africa’s progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). “People want to come to a place that is clean, peaceful, and considers human rights,” says Professor Natanya Meyer, the acting SARChI Chair in Entrepreneurship Education at UJ.
SDG progress has the highest impact on inbound tourism over the long term. The study indicates that a 1% increase in the model’s SDG index is expected to result in a 1.67% increase in inbound tourists’ spending. It means that national effort towards the SDGs is well rewarded by incoming tourist spending.
As of 2025, tourists annually spend about 55% of what they were spending in South Africa before 2020. Inbound tourism expenditure is a major driver of job creation and entrepreneurship opportunities in the country.
Prof Meyer explains: “Tourists come here because we’ve got lots of things that people abroad don’t have. We’ve got the two oceans, Table Mountain, and the wildlife. People ask if it is a country that looks after its people. Is it a clean country? We have many policies that address sustainability and equity issues, including gender and disability.
“Then they look at affordability, which we have because our currency is weaker compared to theirs. They can come and have a nice vacation without turning over every cent.”
Turning point on the horizon?
However, when people look for nice vacation spots, they also consider other factors that South Africa is struggling to control.
Says Prof Meyer: “Then they say, is it politically stable? This is where good governance comes in. Is there corruption? How about crime? So now the tourist needs to decide: am I going to take the risk of visiting a country where governance is maybe less than what I am used to? Or am I going to pass on this opportunity to get more for my money because it’s cheaper and it’s beautiful?
“We still see a lot of tourists coming, making the choice even if the governance is low. However, it’s starting to get to a point where people are considering maybe going somewhere else because of this.”
The concern is backed by data. The study uses the World Bank’s Combined Good Governance Index (CGGI), which measures effective governance, corruption control, and the quality of regulations, to create a new composite index, the Combined Good Governance Index (LCGGI).
The LCGGI fell to its lowest recorded point of -0.25 in 2023, in a steady downward trend from a peak of 0.588 in 1995.
Tracking tourism friction
“We are losing a lot of ground to low-quality governance,” says UJ’s Prof Daniel Meyer, co-author of the study. He is a researcher at the UJ School of Public Management, Governance and Public Policy.
He points to the Government of National Unity as a possible inflection point. The combined administration may have introduced enough political stability to arrest the decline, though it is still too early to call a reversal.
The study constructs a second composite index, the Composite Country Risk Index (LCCRI), that tracks overall country risk. It draws on risk factor data on the country’s political, financial, and economic conditions. It sits just below the 4.1 mark on the study’s scale and has been on a jagged downward curve for the last three decades.
Together, the two indices explain a lot. South Africa has a compelling tourism offer on paper. The natural environment is world-class, and the Rand gives foreign visitors strong buying power. But governance and risk introduce friction that some travellers are no longer willing to absorb.
“You need stability from a security point of view, from a financial risk point of view,” says Prof Daniel Meyer.
“Potential tourists don’t want to see a possibility of a government takeover or a missile that’s going to fall somewhere or a security problem at the airport. Those things create instability, and instability is very bad for tourism.”
The stakes go beyond visitor numbers. Tourism is one of the few sectors in South Africa where the barriers to entry are low enough to make a real dent in unemployment.
“It is an easy entry into a market,” he says. “It is not so expensive to get into tourism, to become an entrepreneur in this space.”
Prof Natanya Meyer agrees. “Previous studies from the researchers tie inbound tourist spending directly to local business creation and job opportunities.”
Bad governance and instability are major underestimated risk factors to the recovery and growth of the South African tourism industry, and its ability to absorb new job seekers.
Research article
Tourism Resilience in Emerging Countries: An Econometric Analysis of Risk Factors, which appeared in Tourism Planning & Development on 28 January 2026 at https://doi.org/10.1080/21568316.2025.2603314.
