‘SA Tourism will benefit from F1’: De Lille backs McKenzie

The Minister of Tourism stands behind the Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture’s determination to bring Formula One (F1) to South Africa.

Minister Patricia De Lille, speaking at the Tourism Economic Impact media briefing on Tuesday, said the country’s tourism sector will benefit from F1 coming to the country.

De Lille said she had a meeting with McKenzie to discuss the Memorandum of Agreements (MOA) between their departments.

The agenda of their meeting also included how to restore heritage sites in the country back to life, and the F1 challenge.

F1 to bring more tourist attraction

“It is not like something has not been done in the past 15 years to bring F1 to the country,” said De Lille.

Adding that she shared with McKenzie the planning that has been done within the last years, in order for them to move forward with the plans and see them through.

She said the sporting event will attract F1 lovers from different parts of the world.

McKenzie had previously taken to social media platform X that he has set meetings with relevant stakeholders to see how the F1 can be held in the country. In his post, he said the first meeting will be held at the end of August in Monaco.

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Bringing Heritage sites back to life

De Lille said their meeting was also centred around how they can restore the former glory of many heritage sites in the country. There are over 200 heritage sites in South Africa and they sit with the Department of Art and Culture. In 2023, the Department of Tourism reached out and said they would like to expose the sites to tourists.

“The Department of Tourism will also put it in their budget to maintain and restore these heritage sites,” she added.

De Lille said they have already commenced with the plans to look at Robben Island, as it is one of the biggest and one of the most visited heritage site in the country.  

She said private sector will also be playing a role in seeing what can be done to increase the number of tourists visiting Robben Island and what upgrades are needed.

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‘Enough planning, more implementation’

De Lille said she mentioned to McKenzie that there have been enough talks and planning around many challenges faced by South Africans and that it is time to implement those plans.

“So now our departments will be working on implementing the plans of our discussion.”

During her address, she said their failure has always been in implementation.

“So, our plan is to look at what targets have been set for us in the National Development Plan (NDP), and what needs to be done to implement this.”

“As the NDP states: Tourism is one of the fastest growing economic sectors and there is an opportunity to increase employment in this sector. The target that has been set for us is to increase arrivals to 15 million by 2030.”

ALSO READ: R102 million of crumbling Robben Island museum’s infrastructure grant unspent

Millions spent on maintenance projects

She outlined that the department will continue to invest in infrastructure development in new and existing tourism establishments.

“As stated in the Tourism Budget Speech last year, the department spent approximately R95 million on 25 maintenance projects in various provinces.”

De Lille says for the current financial year, the department will spend over R81 million on maintaining projects in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, the Northern Cape and the North West. “These are tourism establishments and attractions which are government-owned and community-owned projects,” she added.

More employment projected

She acknowledged the role the sector plays in providing employment.

The sector employed at least 1.46 million people in 2024, and it is estimated to employ 1.7 million people by the end of 2024.

When it comes to the projection made by the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), there will be 2.23 million jobs by 2030 provided by the sector.

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