Days after South Africa agreed to relax its controversial new visa immigration regulations, Air China launched direct flights from Johannesburg to Beijing Friday, IndependentOnline reports.

Air China is expected to have flights three times a week between Johannesburg and Beijing, transporting 311 passengers each way, with plans to open a similar route to the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa.

Tourist arrivals fell by 6 percent earlier this year, the biggest decline in six years since the height of the financial crisis, AFP reported.

The flights will give Chinese travelers more choices after South African Airways stopped flying the route earlier this year, IOL reports. SAA says the route was not profitable enough.

South African Airways lost an estimated 1 billion rand ($72.6 million US) in three years after debuting its non-stop route to Beijing in January 2012, Traveller24 reported in January.

Chinese travelers will no longer have to provide biometric data in person when applying in China for a visa, IOL reports.

However regulations still require children from non visa-exempt countries to travel with unabridged birth certificates in addition to their passports when entering or leaving South Africa, according to AFP. The rule has caused mass confusion.

A slump in tourism numbers has been blamed on the global and domestic economic downturn, Ebola virus perceptions and a change in visa regulations making it more difficult for travelers to visit South Africa, according to IOL.

Overall, Chinese tourism this year increased worldwide but South Africa saw 30-percent fewer Chinese tourists in 2015 than in 2014, with 35,551 tourists this year compared with 51,079 last year.

The new Beijing-Johannesburg route will help reverse that, said Tourism Minister Derek Hanekom.

“We are hoping to see more tourists next year,” Hanekom said. “I believe that with the direct route, we will have higher number of tourists and recovery will be sooner that expected. The new route will take tourism to the next level.”

Traffic from Asia has been slower due to the misunderstood Ebola crisis, said Bongiwe Pityi, manager at the OR Tambo International Airport.

More than 120 medium- and large-sized Chinese companies do business in South Africa and most of them see the country as a gateway for expansion into Africa, said Tian Xuejun, China’s Ambassador to South Africa.

“South Africa is also No. 1 in Africa in terms of the number of overseas Chinese, Chinese sister cities, Chinese tourists and Chinese students,” Tian said. “All these ‘No. 1’ and ‘firsts’ have shown the brisk people-to-people exchanges between the two sides, which means consistent flows of passengers for the airport and airline companies.”

South Africa is one of the top tourism destinations in Africa, and tourism officials want to attract 12 million international tourists by 2018, AFP reported.

Some people think the relaxed visa regulations will simply be a “band aid.”