With South Africa's scenic beauty, tremendous cultural history, fascinating fauna and flora and climate and landscape encouraging adventure, tourism has long been one of the fastest growing sectors in our economy.
The 2010 FIFA World Cup has now come and gone along with all the hype and hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors, but in its wake it left a great optimism and a lasting positive impression of South Africa which is expected to cause a boom in the South African tourism industry in the next 2 years. The world-class effort made to host the World Cup destroyed many of the common ideas that South Africa is "backward", "unsafe" and still "stuck in its old and evil ways". The high standards achieved by our tourism industry were also acknowledged at the annual World Travel Awards for Africa (held in July 2010) where South African Airways, OR International Airport (Johannesburg), The Hilton Hotel in Durban, the cities of Cape Town and Durban and the Blue Train, to name just a few, all received tremendous accolades.
President Jacob Zuma recently noted that:
'The social benefits are priceless. We have seen remarkable unity, patriotism and solidarity being displayed by South Africans, which has never been witnessed before.'
The optimism globally and locally cannot be understated or undervalued and has brought about initiatives to build on the tournament's positive effects, such as the 1Goal and LeadSA campaigns. The great praise and media coverage South Africa received will no doubt bring about renewed vigour in the tourism industry, but along with that we hope that the "can do" spirit of ordinary people coming together and being proud of who we are and what we have achieved, will be an abiding legacy of the 2010 World Cup.
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