JOHANNESBURG, June 25 (Xinhua) -- Over 2.35 million travelers, including arrivals, departures and transits, passed through South Africa's ports of entry and exit in May, official data showed on Tuesday.
"These travelers were made up of 649,610 South African residents and 1,704,822 foreign travelers," said Statistics South Africa in its latest international tourism report.
A breakdown of the figures for foreign travelers showed that there were 881,544 arrivals, 783,999 departures and 39,279 travelers in transit, according to the report.
"Foreign arrivals were made up of 23,774 non-visitors and 857,770 visitors," it said. Of the visitors, 208,316 were same-day visitors and 649,454 overnight visitors, or tourists.
According to the report, in May, there were 147,428 tourists from overseas, 488,299 from Southern African Development Community countries, 12,629 from "other" African countries, and the country of residence of 1,098 tourists were classified as unspecified.
The United States, Britain and India contributed 45 percent to overseas tourists, said the report, adding that holiday continues to be the main purpose of visit, with 96.4 percent of all the tourists in South Africa for holiday purposes.
South Africa has been striving to restore its tourism levels to pre-pandemic levels over the past year as global conditions returned to normal and travel resumed. ■
