More airlines needed to boost post-Covid travel market - De Lille

De Lille delivered the keynote address at the 2023 Africa Travel Indaba in Durban on Tuesday.

The conference is attended by government officials, businesses and investors in the travel and tourism industry from across Africa.

"Making trade and travel seamless across our continent and the various other markets is an absolutely crucial component of economic growth. We need to have enough airlift – to meet both domestic, regional and international demand,” the minister said.

"Encouragingly, Airlift to and from South Africa has seen continuous recovery. Last year we welcomed numerous direct flights from our key source markets into various parts of our country, such as the direct United Airlines flight from Cape Town to Newark in US."

South African airline market saw the permanent grounding of Comair's British Airways (SA) and Kulula.com due to liquidation.

In addition, there has also been the voluntary business rescue of Mango airline operated by the South African Airways and the liquidation of SA Express.

However, De Lille says government has a turnaround strategy in place to revive the industry post Covid-19 pandemic.

"We are therefore, steaming ahead with the implementation of our Tourism Sector Recovery Plan approved by cabinet in March 2021. The plan outlines a set of interventions to ignite the recovery anchored in three strategic themes: protecting and rejuvenating supply, re-igniting demand and strengthening enabling capability for long-term sustainability.

"We are here to drive transformation and support key players to transform and prosper, we are here to help SMMEs to grow and compete globally, we know that for us to return to pre-pandemic performance levels we must;

"Make sure we focus on all our target markets, recover airlift, collaborate as the public and private sector, and very importantly, make sure that Africa in its totality grows and this is why Indaba is proudly Pan African" she added.

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