Anders Kelto produced a nice story on NPR this morning about the surprising increase in tourism from Latin America to South Africa following the 2010 World Cup. Below are some figures showing the increase in numbers from selected countries and overall. the increases in arrivals from Argentina and Brazil are very striking- it looks as if the World Cup had a really big impact on perceptions of South Africa as a tourist destination.
Argentina | Brazil | Chile | Mexico | Venezuela | Other | Total | |
2008 | 8,704 | 35,649 | 3,269 | 3,925 | 1,769 | 9,672 | 2,182,130 |
2009 | 10,750 | 36,957 | 3,006 | 2,931 | 1,366 | 10,201 | 2,095,325 |
2010 | 21701 | 53756 | 7260 | 15923 | 2591 | 19098 | 2216994 |
2011 | 13817 | 54183 | 3210 | 3246 | 1293 | 11757 | 2176719 |
2012 | 17514 | 78376 | 3507 | 3477 | 1442 | 15597 | 2,505,762 |
2013 | 19439 | 82,802 | 4,042 | 4,082 | 1,714 | 17,384 | 2,683,141 |
Argentina | Brazil | Chile | Mexico | Venezuela | Other | Total | |
2008 | 81 | 96 | 109 | 134 | 130 | 95 | 104 |
2009 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
2010 | 202 | 145 | 242 | 543 | 190 | 187 | 106 |
2011 | 129 | 147 | 107 | 111 | 95 | 115 | 104 |
2012 | 163 | 212 | 117 | 119 | 106 | 153 | 120 |
2013 | 181 | 224 | 134 | 139 | 125 | 170 | 128 |
Like most economists I’m very sceptical about the potential of events like the World Cup to change the perception of a destination, and looking at the overall figures for South Africa, while tourism has picked up in the last year or two, I’m not convinced that this is much more than the trend increase that South Africa has enjoyed for some years now. (See here for the published paper on tourist arrivals in South Africa I wrote with Thomas Peeters and Victor Matheson and here for the the free working paper version).
But this data does suggest that an event like the World Cup can cause a dramatic shift in some cases at least. It would be interesting to know how this has happened. As the radio clip suggests, it seems likely that word of mouth has created a buzz in places where little was known in the first place. The problem is that most potential World Cup and Olympic hosts already fairly well known to potential tourists- although Russia in 2018 might benefit from a similar effect, assuming that the political problems have died down by then. Qatar sounds like a stretch.
The pity of it is that these countries account for a tiny share of tourist arrivals, and therefore the economic impact on the South African economy is quite small, and certainly not enough to cover the exorbitant cost of the event. But if arrivals from these countries continued to grow at this rate for another ten years, and would not have happened were it not for the World Cup, it would be possible to start making the economic case.