Tourism in the Western Cape has grown significantly. The international tourist arrivals grew from 1,3 million in 2002 to 1,5 million in 2003. Accolades have been showered on the destination, including Cape Town being voted number 5 in the BBC's 50 places to see before you die and voted the best city in Africa by the World Travel Awards and the Conde Nast Global Awards.
Domestically, the Western Cape received almost 25% of all local tourism expenditure and has provided a direct injection of more than R21 billion to the provincial economy. The growth in tourism has been accompanied by a major increase in foreign direct investment in hotel development, including the 480-room Arabella Sheraton.
Last week the Western Cape achieved yet another milestone by playing host to the launch of the Sho't Left campaign at Langa, the birthplace of the late Brenda Fassie and the oldest African township in Province. The campaign aims to stimulate tourism by South Africans in our own country.
The Sho't Left Campaign is important because it allows us an opportunity to showcase areas like the Cape Flats. These areas are not just about crime, disease and poverty. This Campaign will show that there is a lot to do in the Western Cape than visit the Winelands, Table Mountain, beaches etc.
There are vibrant communities with a rich and diverse cultural heritage, that live in our sprawling townships.
We are in the process of instituting a Cape Flats Tourism Route to ensure that this is a reality.
The long-awaited Cape Town International Convention Centre [CTICC] was officially opened by President Thabo Mbeki on 28 June 2003. This public-private sector partnership was brought in some two months ahead of schedule and under the budget of R582-million. BEE companies did over 48% of the project work [worth over R288-million], the greater majority of these from the Western Cape
Various global events have been smoothly staged, including the Cricket World Cup opening and the President's Golf Cup.
The Destination Marketing Organisation for Cape Town and the Western Cape was established to eliminate duplication of marketing activities and fragmentation of tourism brands, thus laying the platform for greater effectiveness.
We have taken the lead in tourism business development, with national government and other provinces looking at our examples to roll out similar programmes. A tourism mentorship programme, which benefited 10 participants, was launched and has been successful. This was done in partnership with SATSA. The plan is to broaden the pilot project to include the rural areas.
The second Tourism Showcase was held which showcased emerging tourism products and also exposed emerging businesses to local buyers. This is aimed at strengthening the confidence of local buyers with regards to the emerging products. This was coupled by tourism awareness workshops, which reached more than 400 participants.
The safety and security conference was held in October and drew an international panel of speakers which enabled the province to share and debate issues with a variety of role players.
As part of supporting tourist guide transformation, we have trained 30 guides from Historically Disadvantaged Communities. Our plan is to ensure that they are drawn into the mainstream.
We also formalized a system to register tourist guides. This will provide easier analysis of the tourist guide fraternity in terms of where tourist guides are located, numbers registered and area of registration.
We are the first province that has trained Deaf Tourist Guides since we believe that deaf tourism is an untapped niche.
Plans for this financial year
We will support national government's initiative aimed at promoting representivity in the tourism sector. We will engage key stakeholders, (big and small) in the Province to develop a strategy for tourism BEE for the Province.
We will finalise a tourism human resources development strategy aimed at promoting excellence in tourism and using skills development as a tool to empower marginalized people to participate in tourism. We will undertake the first initiatives to give effect to this strategy.
We will launch an intervention called Integrated Tourism Entrepreneurship Support Programme, which is aimed at providing targeted support to black businesses in tourism, focusing on capital, expertise and access to markets. The programme will enable us to monitor the impact of our intervention.
We will put enormous energy into ensuring that the Cape Flats tourism route becomes a reality, taking significant volumes of tourists through our poor neighbourhoods for a unique and truly African shopping, dining, wining, entertainment and site-seeing experience.
We will put in place legislation to govern mandatory registration of all tourism businesses. This is aimed at protecting the industry and integrity of the destination through ensuring that all tourism businesses adhere to minimum basic standards related to safety, security, hygiene, truthful advertising and non discrimination.
We will continue to work with our partners to ensure that tourists are safe when they visit our province. We will work with our key partners at South African National Parks to position the Southern Most Tip of Africa (Cape Agulhas) as an icon to be reckoned with.
We will package tourism investment opportunities as identified in our Integrated Tourism Development Framework to be marketed to local and international investors.
We would put in place a system to monitor tourists' consumer complaints and to combat illegal guiding.
Most importantly, we will invest in a plan for the development of a Karoo Tour Gate in Beaufort West. This project will confirm the status of Beaufort West as the Northern Gateway to the province. The tour gate will operate as a stop over point, information centre, resting, eating and sleeping place for travellers passing through.
Enkosi.
