THE docking of the Europa passenger liner in Cape Town on Tuesday was meant to be a ribbon-cutting celebration marking the official start of the cruise ship season in South Africa’s top tourist hub, the first since the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
But international travel curbs on southern Africa, where the new Omicron variant was first identified, have blown expectations of a bumper tourist season out of the water.
The multi-storey luxury liner is the first to dock at Cape Town since South Africa imposed a total ban on all cruise ships entering local ports in March 2020 after the first coronavirus infection in the country.
A succession of tough lockdown curbs has hammered a local tourism sector dependent on foreign tourists as businesses closed their doors and shed thousands of hospitality jobs.
Now travel restrictions from the European Union, the UK and United States due to Omicron, designated a variant of
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