How we can get a tourism-related job in every home in Cape Town

Business Brief by James Vos, Mayoral Committee Member for Economic Growth and Tourism

Tourism is often thought of as a ‘soft’ industry. But this industry is, in fact, integral to others and the wider economy.

How so? Consider that, pre-COVID, tourism contributed between 2% and 3.5% annually (pre-COVID) to Cape Town’s economy and sustained up to 5% of all jobs in the city.

Consider also how tourism connects to food and beverages, retail, and transportation, to name a few. When people come here from the other side of the country, continent or world, they don’t come to only lie on our beaches or go up the mountain (although those are reason enough!); they buy the products made by our businesses and visit our communities, thus enjoying our history and cultures.

Through travel, malva pudding goes from being a locally-loved delicacy to a global trend; a design goes from Khayelitsha’s streets to London’s catwalks; and investors witnessing the potential of green tech in Atlantis, go from curious, to signing on the dotted line.

More livelihoods are created, retained, and sustained.

One of the great privileges of my work is that I get to work with people from all over Cape Town and witness how that access to meaningful opportunity gives a sense of pride and worthiness.

When you look at it like that, a clearer picture emerges of how tourism leads to investments and jobs and how it connects to the rest of Cape Town’s economy.

This speaks to my mission to help secure a tourism related job in every household in Cape Town.

How do we make this happen? It really comes down to several mechanisms that form the basis of our tourism strategy.

• Work closely with partners such as Cape Town Tourism, the City’s Destination Marketing Organisation, to promote the Mother City, stay connected with travellers before, during, and after their visit, and empower local industry businesses with access to information, networking opportunities, exposure, and more.
• Support community businesses who reveal and highlight the diversity that makes us uniquely Cape Town. Under this banner, we have just started our Community Conversation series with industry operators in target areas. Our first conversation was held in Hout Bay, and the next will take us to Langa. In these engagements, we are working with businesses to hone their offerings and find synergies between their services and products.
• Prioritise the Air Access initiative that boosts Cape Town’s access to key source markets, allowing for greater travel and trade to more areas of the world. Air Access, which is facilitated by Wesgro and receives funding from the City, is tasked with promoting, developing and maintaining national and international air routes to and from Cape Town International Airport.

The success of this initiative is evidenced by the fact that Cape Town International Airport welcomed 191 flights per week during the peak summer season. The international terminal, saw a recovery of 73% last year when compared to 2019, with almost 1.9 million two-way passengers moving through the terminal.

The international terminal is now entering a growth phase with passenger numbers expected to surpass 2019 figures in the next few months, with the trend continuing throughout 2023.

As part of the goal to achieve greater growth, I just returned from a trade mission in Brazil to make a case for a direct flight between that country and Cape Town, and will be embarking on a similar trip to Kenya and several other places in Africa to increase connections with Cape Town.

• My officials and I are also exploring further partnerships and sister city agreements with destinations across Africa. Foreign Africans comprised 74,3% of international visitors to South Africa in 2019. As part of our successful air connectivity programme with cities on the continent, it makes sense to build on this for the benefit of travel and trade, and show that Cape Town is a proudly African city.
• Upping Cape Town’s cruise destination profile which we have done under the banner of the Cruise Cape Town partnership which launched two years ago. This will bring many spinoffs from passenger spending to ship maintenance and provision of supplies. The 2022/2 cruise season had 75 ships on the booking schedule, and preliminary bookings for the 2023/24 season indicates 120 ship visits to Cape Town. With an estimated R100 million in total passenger spend per port visit, this is a significant market for Cape Town.
• Similarly, boosting the metro’s already stellar profile in the MICE (meetings, incentive, conferences and exhibitions) sector through the Cape Town & Western Cape Convention Bureau. The bureau has secured 27 bids for major conferences that will take place in the coming years. With just these events, we are estimating that a projected R393.4 million will be injected into the local economy.
• Continuing to lobby National Government for the implementation of a Remote Worker Visa. I’m very happy that they have decided to seriously look at this. As I have noted in my correspondence with the National Government, the visa would simply require an amendment be made to the Immigration Act in terms of the number of days remote workers will stay in the country and show that their source of income is outside South Africa. Cape Town is already one of the most favoured spots in the world for remote workers, and with this type of visa, we could make the entire country even more appealing to these big spending travellers. Over 40 countries around the world have already adopted a special visa for remote workers or digital nomads, including four across Africa. South Africa can ill afford to be left behind much longer.

Cape Town had an excellent visitor season this past summer as evidenced by the figures above. These gains didn’t come out of nowhere but are the result of years of planning in collaboration with partners.

An example of this our Tourism Bounce Back Strategy, initially formulated in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, to achieve breakout growth in volumes and values. This strategy has been a cornerstone of our work in creating the foundations for industry growth. Its plans included our marketing and communications approach around visiting, living, working, studying, playing and investing in Cape Town as well as domestic campaigns targeted at locals and showing Cape Town as a quality and affordable destination.

Now, we are looking to build on this growth, exceed those figures, and realise our goal of creating a tourism-related job in every household.

Through tourism, we can continue to economically empower communities while showcasing and sharing Cape Town’s rich cultural and historical heritage with visitors.