As the world ponders all sorts of measures that can be done in order to see people return to some kind of normalcy, many countries are taking are doing anything and everything to see to it that their economies open up to have people return to work. Countries like USA, Britain,  Spain and Italy are lifting up their strict lockdown measures to allow people go back to work. Some of the sectors that are rapidly opening is tourism.

However, there are some countries that have decided to cautious when it comes to opening their tourism industries. South Africa is one of these cautious countries. South Africa went into lockdown, and it now looks like that’s not anywhere close to being eased up. As reported by Africa News, South Africa’s government isn’t planning on opening to tourism for quite a while:

• Domestic tourism won’t resume until December 2020
• International tourism won’t resume until February 2021

At least that’s based on a briefing from the Department of Tourism today. I’d note that like everything right now, this is presumably pretty fluid, and the timeline could change, either for better or worse.

Tourism in South Africa is huge, and makes up nearly 9% of the country’s GDP, so presumably they’re anxious to get it restarted. However, clearly the country is taking a cautious approach.

The impact this has on South Africa’s airlines

South Africa has long had a challenging aviation market. South African Airways entered business rescue in December 2019 (and was struggling before this all started), while Comair and subsidiary Kulula.com entered business rescue just a few weeks ago.

If this plan sticks, these airlines will end up more or less being grounded for nearly a year, and that won’t be easy on them. Then again, maybe it’s almost better to just have the airlines grounded altogether, rather than flying with greatly reduced demand.

Presumably some business travel will be happening before the tourism sector reopens, though it seems unlikely airlines could operate flights profitably based purely on business demand.

Comair entered business rescue a few weeks ago

Bottom line

While anything can change, as of now South Africa doesn’t plan on bringing back domestic tourism until December 2020, and international tourism until February 2021.

Many countries have rather aggressive reopening plans, but South Africa is definitely taking a more cautious approach.

Situations like this are also a reason that all of my travel planning over the next several months will be done last minute, given how quickly things are evolving, both for better and worse.