From left: Cape Town Tourism CEO Enver Duminy, IC Africa Travel & Tours Director Ingrid Carelse, Mayoral Committee member of Economic Growth Alderman James Vos and Philippa Taylor, Office Manager at BAZ Art Organisation.
From next month, through to March 2023, Cape Town will be welcoming up to 191 flights per week
SOUTH AFRICA – Cape Town Tourism’s (CTT) most recent Annual General Meeting has mapped out the next steps of the sector’s economic recovery. The organisation has now set its sights on re-establishing the Mother City’s position as one of the top tourism destinations in the world through an exciting range of innovative campaigns, inspiring initiatives, and localised programmes that will benefit tourists, the industry, and stakeholders.
Enver Duminy, Cape Town Tourism Chief Executive Officer, said the tourism sector’s recovery looks promising. However, there’s still a way to get the industry buoyant and fully recoup from recent challenges: "Our strategic focus for the next 12 months is on demand generation, increasing market share, and city pride. We’ve also introduced new programmes to provide mutually beneficial outcomes across our core stakeholder groups – destination, industry, and community.”
“Through integration and a collaborative effort, we have, and will continue, to create the impact required to deliver on our purpose of improving the lives of Capetonians and unlock the next phase of our rapid recovery plans,” he adds.
Alderman James Vos, the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Economic Growth, says that working closely with CTT has allowed the City to deliver on some of their biggest priorities for tourism growth to date, the most important being conversion. “We are constantly striving for this – turning potential bookings into actual bookings. Our collaborative work with CTT is evident in this goal being achieved, with the latest data from Cape Town International Airport indicating that arrivals to Africa’s best airport continues its upward flight. At the beginning of this year, international airport arrivals recovered to 34% of 2019 figures for that same period. Between July and September, it was up to 84% with total arrivals recovering to 70%.”
From next month, through to March 2023, Cape Town will be welcoming up to 191 flights per week. “This will amount to approximately 1.5 million two-way seats over the period, generating a whopping R7.9 billion in tourism spend!” adds Vos.
Outgoing Chair, Brett Hendricks spoke on the past year and the encouraging growth in both international and local travel and hospitality in Cape Town. “We have won a number of prestigious destination awards of which we are extremely proud. Being recognised as a truly world class destination shows us all, as an industry, that the hard work behind the scenes, doesn’t go unnoticed.”
Cape Town Tourism’s newest recovery phase follows in the footsteps of its highly successful “FIND YOUR FREEDOM” initiative. The campaign gave tourists feeling trapped in their homes an opportunity to break free, re-find their freedom and help the City fuel faster recovery in the visitor economy.
“The next iteration is titled “Find Your Freedom X” with the “X” representing our purpose, our strive towards innovation and sustainability – it is about being truly transformative as an organisation, as an industry and as a city,” says Hendricks.
The organisation is now giving tourists and the tourism industry more reasons to be optimistic about Cape Town tourism in the next 12 months.
1. Safeguarding Cape Town tourism: Re-establishing itself as a top tourism destination means creating safe travel experiences. That’s why Cape Town Tourism will continue to ensure the safety and support of its international and local tourists through Travelwise and the Band-Aid programme – which helps visitors who may be in distress during their stay in Cape Town.
2. Giving locals a reason to smile: Whether it’s a cable car ride, a diving lesson, or paragliding over the mountains, the Cape Town Tourism’s new Freedom to Wish campaign, which ran during Tourism Month in September, gave back to the locals that make the Mother City a dream destination! Freedom to Wish invited anyone living in Cape Town to nominate themselves or a loved one to highlight the one thing they would love to experience in their city. The campaign had already received thousands of wishes and put smiles on almost 300 faces.
3. Focusing on global partnerships: Forming part of a mission to attract more travel and trade to the Mother City, The City of Cape Town and Cape Town Tourism signed a partnership agreement earlier this year with Visit Berlin, the destination marketing rganization for the German capital.
Germany has long been a key source market for Cape Town, with the city enjoying a lively German-speaking community. “Global partnerships like this offer exciting travel opportunities to the global adventurer. International visitors had shown that their appetite for travel was alive and well. We are ready to shine the spotlight on our unparalleled hospitality to visitors from Berlin, and from around the world,” says Duminy.
Continuing into 2023, the partnership will see the two organisations market their respective cities to their audiences, driven by mutual benefits. “The vision is for our collective voice to be heard globally to rewrite, rethink and reorganize tourism together. Learning from each other and integrating best practice across our cities, proactively acting ourselves before we are forced to act,” adds Hendricks.
4. Giving its membership programme a digital refresh: After considering all the feedback from its members, Cape Town Tourism is organisation the sign-up process with shorter, simpler, and quicker sign-ups online, stepping away from its paper-based and manual onboarding. The organization is also introducing a communications calendar so members can anticipate industry news and information and plan accordingly.
Members will also benefit from a newly launched portal on the capetown.travel website with individual member logins, designed to make it easier and faster for them to access and manage their information and benefits in one convenient place. These refreshed platforms also promise to reach more travellers and charge up the destination’s recovery with enhanced digital access.
5. Best-in-class benefits for local SMMEs: Cape Town Tourism is amplifying its Preferred Supplier Programme to include more suppliers so members can save even more when and where it counts. Additionally, to fulfil members’ love for networking, the organisation is introducing annual B2B Expos as an additional top-up benefit, including sessions around using and applying membership benefits to boost their business.
6. Promoting award-winning local businesses: The Cape Town Tourism Board Development Fund (BDF) is proud to announce that Baz Art and IC Africa Travel & Tours are the 2022 recipients of the annual BDF Award. Baz Art is a unique tour guide company that transforms Cape Town into a public art exhibition by highlighting the power of street art and its ability to generate conversations among individuals and communities.
IC Africa Travel & Tours takes great pleasure, and professional pride in helping international and domestic travellers experience the deeply rooted and unique beauty and diversity of the African landscape.
“We’ve always strived to create opportunities to nurture entrepreneurship and innovation in the local SMME space, whether through cash awards, mentorships, or other business-boosting actions that develop their tourism businesses. Our BDF programme supports the sustainability of these initiatives and creates a marketing and media platform that improves their business profile,” says Hendricks.
Cape Town Tourism says it is grateful for the support and loyalty of its members over the years. It says their accreditation to the organisation not only associates them with adventure, deeply rooted heritage and culture but has built Cape Town Tourism into a globally recognised tourism brand.
“We are well onto the road to recovery, and we remain resolute in our mission to help all locals to Love Cape Town and make our city a better place to live for all our citizens through tourism,” concludes Duminy.
Vicky is the co-founder of TravelDailyNews Media Network where she is the Editor-in Chief. She is also responsible for the daily operation and the financial policy. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Tourism Business Administration from the Technical University of Athens and a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Wales.
She has many years of both academic and industrial experience within the travel industry. She has written/edited numerous articles in various tourism magazines.
