IN SHORT: South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs plans to phase out the Trusted Tour Operator Scheme and replace it with the Electronic Travel Authorisation system being rolled out through 2026. The industry has pushed back sharply, warning that the ETA is not yet fit for group travel and that axing TTOS before peak season could collapse bookings from India and China.
South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs is planning to phase out the Trusted Tour Operator Scheme, absorbing the group visa mechanism into the country’s new Electronic Travel Authorisation system, a move that has blindsided tour operators and drawn warnings that the ETA lacks the functionality needed to handle group travel from China and India. Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber has signalled the TTOS will be superseded by the ETA, which has been rolling out in phases since October 2025 and currently covers nationals from China, India, Indonesia, and Mexico at major airports.
- The TTOS, launched as a pilot in February 2025, allows 110 accredited tour operators to submit group visa applications digitally on behalf of clients, with processing typically completed within three to five working days. It has attracted an estimated 35,000 additional tourists from China and India in its first seven months.
- The South African Tourism Services Association CEO David Frost said there has been no meaningful engagement with the organised tourism sector on the planned transition, with industry input limited to a single webinar at TTOS launch.
- Industry specialist Johan Groenewald of Royal African Discoveries warned that removing operator control over the visa process will “create havoc,” adding that if TTOS ends before peak season beginning in April, it risks a complete loss of trust by the Indian trade in South Africa’s visa system.
- Gaps flagged in the ETA include the inability to amend applications once submitted, no support channel for resolving issues, and no functionality for processing children’s visas, which are significant for family travel groups.
- Despite TTOS progress, South Africa still receives far fewer visitors from China and India than in 2013: 38,000 from China and 66,000 from India in 2025, against approximately 151,000 and 112,000 respectively in 2013.
- The ETA is part of a broader ambition to reach 15.6 million international tourists by 2030. South Africa recorded 10.5 million arrivals in 2025, its highest post-pandemic total.
The tension here is real. The TTOS was designed specifically for the group travel market, where the tour operator manages the entire visa pipeline for a cohort of travellers simultaneously. The ETA is an individual application system. Converting group travel from a centrally managed operator process to individual applications removes accountability from a single regulated entity and distributes it across dozens or hundreds of travellers, many of whom may not have experience navigating South Africa’s digital systems in their home language.
The Bigger Picture: South Africa’s 2013 peak of 151,000 Chinese arrivals has still not been recovered more than a decade later. The TTOS was the first mechanism specifically designed to address the structural bottleneck that caused that collapse: slow, paper-based, in-person visa processes at two missions serving 1.4 billion people. Shutting it down before the ETA is demonstrably capable of handling group travel at scale risks losing the momentum that 35,000 new arrivals in seven months represented. The industry’s frustration is not with digital transformation but with sequencing. Absorb TTOS into the ETA once the ETA can do everything TTOS does, not before.
Source: Tourism Update / ATTA
