Fedhasa disappointed by the festive season tourism performance

The tourism industry association, Federated Hospitality Association of South Africa (Fedhasa), has expressed disappointment over the sector’s performance during the festive season. 

Fedhasa national chairperson, Brett Tungay, said their anecdotal statistics for the festive season became very much of a mixed bag across the country, describing it as disappointing.

“The high-end tourism destinations continued to do well, while the mid-level and low-levels saw a drop. The prime spots occupancy rate sat between 80 and 85%, but then, as soon as you went out of the prime tourism spots, most people reported 70 to 75%. That was the general trend for this festive season,” Tungay said.

He added that areas like Mossel Bay and the Waterfront in Cape Town did very well; however other tourism destinations did not have good business.

He highlighted that even those destinations that appear to have done well reported results similar to the previous festive season.

Tungay stated that South Africa saw a really slow start for the first two weeks of the season, and that resulted in a short season.

“It was a shorter season. It was only really two weeks. There has not been much growth. Only the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast had a brilliant comeback, reporting about 25% increase in most tourism areas during the festive season,” he said.

He added that these factors are an indication that the SA consumer is definitely under economic strain.

Rural communities, such as the far north coast of KZN, including Richards Bay, did not have a lot of good business during the festive season, he said. 

"Certain smaller nodes came through here and there; however, if we look more broadly around the country, there wasn’t the growth that was anticipated," he said. 

“KZN, Free State, North West, Northern Cape, have a huge drop off in the foreign tourism numbers, and that to a large extent is the self-drive and camp-a-home market. Again, we need good roads because what we find is that the travel agents aren’t booking areas that have marginal road access, which is understandable. After all, no one wants to be hit by potholes and get punctured,” Tungay said. 

He added that they would like to see the infrastructure challenges being addressed.

“We would like to see the provinces, especially KwaZulu-Natal (Drakensberg), Free State, Mpumalanga, Northern Cape, and North West, concentrating on the rehabilitation of access roads. If tourism does well, that means the infrastructure for all the other sectors of the economy is going to benefit everybody else. We need good roads, not just for tourism, but for agriculture, manufacturing, etc.,” he stated. 

Fedhasa will release full statistics for the sector’s festive season performance in mid-February 2026.

Collen Msibi, spokesperson for the national Department of Transport, stated that the Department, on an annual basis, supports the provinces to maintain provincial roads through a Provincial Road Maintenance Grant (PRMG), which is an allocation of over R10 billion per annum. 

“However, this allocation is not fully utilised, which is a concern for the department, yet we have roads that are desperately in need of maintenance at the provincial level. It is a matter that features prominently in our forum between the national department and provinces,” Msibi said. 

He added that the national roads, which fall under the Department’s agency, SANRAL, are in good condition. 

The department continues to work closely with its sister Department of Tourism, more so on issues relating to the application of operating permits and licences by tour operators, Msibi stated.

“We have also allowed provinces to utilise the PRMG allocation to fix the roads that allow access to tourist destinations. SANRAL is also playing a critical role in this regard, facilitating access for tourism. Sanral is involved in fixing the road to Isandlwana as one of the examples,” he said.

gcwalisile.khanyile@inl.co.za