South Africa has opened its domestic tourism for business travel and other limited activities, with partial domestic air travel for business purposes allowed.
Following industry-wide engagements, there has been a commitment by the South African government, led by President Ramaphosa and the private sector, to work towards a phased reopening of the sector, starting at Level 3.
President Ramaphosa announced that the alert level for the whole country was lowered to Level 3 on 1 June 2020, allowing essential business travel domestically, with movements across the levels (including duration & timelines) still dependent on the trajectory of the pandemic.
When the risk-adjusted strategy was initially introduced in April, the tourism sector was placed at alert level 1 with some operations permissible at alert level 2. However, over the last few weeks, a lot of consultative work and focus has been placed on both de-risking the sector and putting health and operational protocols in place for the safety of all tourists and employees. These have been benchmarked against measures being rolled out globally.
Along with global trends, it is expected that in South Africa, domestic tourism and business travel will lead the recovery followed by regional and international (long-haul) travel.
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