Tourism and the 2010 World Cup: Lessons for Developing Countries

Over recent years the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) nations have secured the right to host several major international sporting events. Growth in tourism from developed countries is crucial to turn these events into a successful strategy for economic development. In this paper we use monthly country-by-country arrival data to assess the impact of organising the FIFA 2010 World Cup on tourism in South Africa. We find that South Africa attracted around 220,000 extra arrivals from non-Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries during the event, and 300,000 over the entire year. These numbers are less than the predictions made by the organisers prior to the event and imply that the total cost per extra non-SADC visitor amounted to $13,000.