WHEN international borders started to open in mid-2021, the travel and tourism industry expected a slow recovery, primarily due to too many travel restrictions still in place, coupled with an uneven vaccine rollout globally.
However, the recent surge in travel activity has taken the industry by surprise, exceeding the conservative recovery projections. According to visa outsourcing and technology services specialist VFS Global, the number of visa applications between January and August 2022 alone was almost four times larger than the total number of applications for the whole of last year.
Jiten Vyas, Chief Commercial Officer, at VFS Global, says, “This increase is primarily driven by a high pent-up travel demand. With the opening of international borders, easing of travel restrictions, and the resumption of regular international flights, the industry is witnessing peak ‘revenge’ travel.
Canada and Australia were the top locations for outbound travel from South Africa in terms of visa application volumes, while growth was also seen in outbound travel to Schengen locations, particularly in Italy and the Netherlands. According to Vyas, the resumption of in-campus classes at overseas universities was also a major contributing factor to the spike in outbound traffic.
“Even though the effects of the pandemic remain omnipresent in certain parts of the world, many embassies are still inundated with visa applications,” he adds.
Agility is key
“Keeping pace with the changes, our businesses have become even more customer-centric, resilient, and efficient right across our global network of 140+ countries. As a result, by December 2020, we were able to resume operations in 1 600 Visa Application Centres (more than half our global network), catering to over 50 client governments across 129 countries.” As of today, two thirds of the VFS Global application centre network is now up and running.
