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Cape Town – While Cape Town features prominently in searches for flights among people in the UK and Germany, it seems Asian travellers mostly search for flights to Johannesburg.
This is one of the interesting trends identified in the Cheapflights Compass Report South Africa, which was launched in Cape Town on Tuesday.
The global flight search and travel deals platform analysed nearly 600 000 hours of search data accumulated for between April 1 2016 and March 31 2017.
“One could speculate that, while people from the UK and Germany are searching for flight options to Cape Town because of leisure travel, the dominance of Johannesburg among searches from people in Asia – especially Chinese – are because of business travel,” Ricky Wilkes, global head of sales and digital travel deals at Cheapflights, told Fin24 at the launch.
At 83% and 80% respectively, travellers from China and Hong Kong strongly favour flying to Johannesburg, rather than the Mother City.
“With China’s growing interest in the investment and economic growth possibilities in Africa, the preference for Joburg may well be business related,” states the report.
Germans, on the other hand, are twice as likely to choose Cape Town over Johannesburg, which suggests travel for pleasure rather than business.