If you host it, where will they come from? Mega-Events and Tourism in South Africa

Hosting a major international sporting event is a costly affair for the organizing country. Growth in tourism is often cited as one of the economic benefits, which should allow the host to earn back these costs. In this paper we use monthly country-by-country arrival data to assess the impact of organizing the FIFA 2010 World Cup on tourism in South Africa. We find that South Africa attracted around 200,000 extra arrivals from non-SADC countries during the event. Participating countries and South Americans contributed most to this increase. These figures are far below most projections made before the event.