10-point plan to save tourism in Cape Town - still world’s most beautiful city

RELATED: Cape Town – still without tourists - wins big at the 2020 World Travel Awards

Covid-19 has kneecapped Cape Town - Africa’s most popular city for tourists.

Every year, its extreme beauty and uniquely interesting people draw in the crowds and their hard currencies.

A walk down the formerly rambunctious Long Street – now quiet with much of it boarded up – tells the sorry tale of a city dependent on tourists that do not come.

RELATED: Cape Town is the greatest tourist city on Earth - Telegraph Travel Awards

Mayoral Committee Member for Economic Opportunities James Vos issued this 10-plan last week:

• Adapt and implement the “Comprehensive Tourism Bounce Back Plan” developed between the City of Cape Town and the City’s Official Destination Marketing organisation, Cape Town Tourism (CTT).

• Assist the tourism industry by unlocking immediate relief measures to address the severe cash flow crisis many tourism businesses currently face, in a bid to help as many as possible stay afloat, thereby ensuring as many of them survive until substantial demand finally returns. This includes lobbying for extended UIF-TERS relief from the national government, rescheduling their municipal arrears to reduce the current financial burden, continuing to offer guesthouses the option to be reclassified as residential so as to reduce their rates bill, and waiving of lease payments by companies renting a property from the City.

• Continue to lobby National Government to responsibly ease the current COVID-19 restrictions that are making it difficult for tourism and hospitality establishments to operate in a financially sustainable manner.

• CTT, along with its industry partners, will continue to drive its successful domestic tourism campaigns to generate local demand for the tourism industry. These will run alongside the destination marketing campaign by the City of Cape Town. Currently, two campaigns are being run by CTT and the City of Cape Town’s Place Marketing unit is running a destination marketing campaign in nine airports across South Africa.

• Continue to leverage all of our strategic partnerships and agreements to ensure connectivity and demand flows to Cape Town. This includes continued funding for the Air Access initiative to renew, retain and grow air access into Cape Town, Cape Town Cruise Initiative, as well as city to city agreements.

• Ensuring Cape Town is a safe tourism destination by communicating, informing and empowering tourism establishments to implement all Covid-19 regulations. This is being carried out through daily communications from CTT and partners, webinars, the Travelwise website, and the promotion of the safe travel stamp from the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC).

• Ensure that Cape Town stays top of mind in key source markets via targeted social media messaging and social media monitoring to establish and respond to changing traveller demands. The City of Cape Town, along with CTT, will continue to produce content for International Marketing campaigns that will be rolled out when the international tourism environment proves conducive to the launching of such a campaign. These campaigns include Remote Work positioning to attract Digital Nomads, International Campaign: At one with Nature, and #thisiscapetown

• The City of Cape Town will work alongside CTT to identify and develop new tourism products that can diversify our offering as a tourism destination. These will include community routes development currently taking place in Langa, Khayelitsha, Mitchells Plain and Bo-Kaap.

• Promote Cape Town as a resilient and responsible tourism destination under the City of Cape Town’s Responsible Tourism strategy. This will include the acknowledgement and promotion of those establishments in implementing applicable responsible tourism standards.

• The City of Cape Town will continue to find innovative ways to roll out the schools' tourism programme that is fostering a tourism mindset among our youth, both as a destination and as a potential career option for them.

Kieno Kammies interviewed CEO of Cape Town Tourism, the City's official destination marketing organisation, Enver Duminy, about the CIty's 10-point plan to boost tourism and the related industries.

Cape Town has alternatives; it’s got open spaces…

Enver Duminy, CEO - Cape Town Tourism

The hotel industry must adapt. A good example is The President Hotel – they offer day-stays where a family can use all the facilities for a day for R500…

Enver Duminy, CEO - Cape Town Tourism

For locals… if you do a short break… look at value for money… You can negotiate…

Enver Duminy, CEO - Cape Town Tourism

Our budget has shrunk significantly… How do we survive? …

Enver Duminy, CEO - Cape Town Tourism

Click here to watch a slideshow detailing the 10-point plan.

Listen to the interview in the audio below.

Watch an explanation of the 10-point plan:

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