However, this interest, when translated into reality, has to be accompanied by ease of access to the destination. This is critical to the growth of inbound tourism. We need to build and sustain partnership with role players such as airline operators. We need to ensure that their needs are met and most importantly implement programmes to stimulate demand for the destination.
I am committed to ensure that we build these partnerships. Just recently my department together with ACSA , and Cape Town Routes Unlimited hosted an Airline destination workshop focussing on how we can nurture growth in the destination and make ourselves desirable for tourism investment by airline operators and others.
At the end of the day, the bottom line is profit for the airline and profit can only be achieved if there are more passengers demanding service. It’s all about marketing and more marketing, but we need to do so in partnership with players who have common interests.
The challenge is to support each other and work together. We need to promote collective attractiveness of the province in order to diversify products offered and to attract new markets. We need to project an image that will shape perception of our region as a desirable place to work, do business and visit. I am thrilled that some of this approach is already beginning to bear fruit
It therefore gives me great pleasure to be asked to speak at the launch of a direct flight between Maun in Botswana and Cape Town. The extension of our airline network in the SADC region will result in improved package offerings to tourists and the further spread of the benefits associated with this lucrative industry.
Cape Town Routes Unlimited, our DMO, has as one of its major thrusts, the need to expand our markets into Africa and to attract more of the African Market to our destination for the mutual benefit of the entire region. The launch of this direct flight today represents a step in this direction.
More importantly, as we sit on the southernmost part of the African continent we see the development of a network of airline linkages as being critical to realise the goals of a prosperous Africa.
This linkage gives effect to the maxim: “It is Africa’s time”
I am hopeful that the Maun and Botswana Tourism authorities will see this as an opportunity to engage with my Department and Cape Town Routes Unlimited to ensure that our routes are indeed really “unlimited”.
Tourism represents part of the new currency of our economy and it is my personal mission to see that the benefits associated with it are spread not only to the Western Cape, but to the rest of the country and beyond. We are only as strong as our neighbours allow us to be – so we should partner them and I see this flight linkage as part of the development of this partnership.
I want to take this opportunity to congratulate all of you who have made it possible for us to add this direct flight to our already impressive list of direct destinations.
In closing, I want to say that government acknowledges the very important contribution of airlines to the tourism industry in the region and would like to thank you for the decision to service the Cape. We look forward to a strengthened partnership.
I thank you and wish you well for the future
Lynne BrownMEC: Finance, Economic Development and Tourism
