Ongoing efforts to help tourism industry recover

STATEMENT BY THE MAYORAL COMMITTEE MEMBER FOR ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES AND ASSET MANAGEMENT, ALDERMAN JAMES VOS

The City of Cape Town is certainly hopeful about the tourism industry’s recovery and the GDP statistics released by Statistics South Africa are cause for cautious optimism. To assist this sector, the City’s Enterprise and Investment Department is constantly implementing measures to drive the various stages of economic recovery and industry readiness. Read more below:

A few months ago the City put together the Tourism Task Team to get the industry through these tough times and also focus on the future prospects. It enjoys a high level of support from across the sector as well as our official destination marketing organisation, Cape Town Tourism.

I am pleased to say that we are implementing programmes to stimulate supply and demand for domestic and international markets, as well as pocket-friendly campaigns.

Together with Cape Town Tourism, the City implemented a Tourism Ten-Point Strategy in which we detail specific goals in how we will recover the industry. As a result, we have seen the hospitality and tourism sectors claw back gains after a tough 2020. Domestic flights to Cape Town International Airport rose by 66% in the first half of May, the strongest recovery since the resumption of local flights in June 2020. Restaurants and local tourism providers have seen a resultant uptick in business.

We are rolling out initiatives to help facilitate new products and experiences.

Our aim is to help more tourism-preneurs reach their full potential as this will broaden and diversify the tourism and hospitality industries and get it going better than ever.

If tourism is going to build back better, communities, governments and the tourism industry must come up with a transformative plan that is workable and helps drive traveller behaviour change. The pandemic has given us a chance for a reset — we should make the most of the opportunity.

Encouraging news on vaccines has boosted hopes for recovery. However government must fast-track the roll-out in order to instil confidence in our destination and economy.

More information is available here: www.capetown.travel