Statistics SA released its Tourism 2020 report on Thursday.
It shows the devastating impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on foreign arrivals in the country.
The impact was mainly due to lockdown regulations.
Foreign arrivals to South Africa dropped by 71% from just over 15.8 million in 2019 to less than 5 million in 2020, according to the Tourism 2020 report released by Statistics South Africa on Thursday.
The report says it is evident that the Covid-19 pandemic hit the tourism industry quite hard around the world and in South Africa, mainly due to the lockdown and travel restrictions that were imposed.
About 74.8% of the tourists who arrived in South Africa in 2020 were residents of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries. Zimbabwe remained the leading SADC country in terms of tourist visits. In 2020, 1.5% of tourists were from other African countries apart from the SADC region. Nigeria was the leading country for tourists to SA in this category.