It is interesting to see how Councillor Grant Pascoe, City of Cape Town Mayoral Committee member for Tourism, Events, and Marketing, has interpreted the results of a Grant Thornton survey of ‘spend on tourism in Cape Town‘, to obtain maximum PR spin out of the survey results.
While the Grant Thornton study shows that the average rate of growth between 2009 and 2012 was 5,6 % per annum, there were increases and decreases in revenue in this period, the revenue generated having peaked in 2010 at R16 billion, growing from R12,4 billion in 2009 to R14,6 billion in 2012, a City of Cape Town media release reveals. Fascinating is that the value of the tourism industry in Cape Town in 2009 was quantified at R 17,3 billion, when the City announced the appointment of the consultancy in conducting the study. Now the 2009 value has been reduced by R5 billion – could this have been done to make the tourism industry show growth instead of a loss in revenue over the 2009 – 2012 period?!
The tourism consultancy was contracted to conduct a three year study on the economic benefit of tourism in Cape Town, and this is the first of its results to be made public. The consultancy lost face in 2010 when it got the projections for attendance at the World Cup soccer for our country so badly wrong, having grossly over-estimated the number of soccer fans attending the World Cup matches around the country.
Councillor Pascoe’s response was to praise the ‘increase in tourism numbers equates to an increase in jobs‘, but the study does not share that it measured tourism numbers, there not necessarily being a correlation. Tourists may have spent more, prices may well have increased by the inflation rate of about 6%, or tourists stayed for longer periods than in the past! Always the DA politician, Councillor Pascoe states that the tourism revenue growth (which he correlates to the growth in number of jobs related to the growth in number of tourists, which was not measured by the study) ‘helps this administration realise its commitment to build an Opportunity City for all our residents‘. He does not define what such an ‘Opportunity City‘ is! He is further quoted in making this nonsensical statement about tourists, showing how little he knows about our industry: ‘The results prove that tourists are not only coming to the City to experience the natural beauty, but also to spend, providing a much-needed boost to the local economy’.
The research also found that Cape Town’s tourism industry created the most jobs in the unskilled and semi-skilled categories, but no numbers are supplied. According to the study, 19000 permanent and 12000 temporary staff are employed in the unskilled and semi-skilled categories, and that the tourism industry employs around 34500 permanent and about 15000 temporary employees.
An interesting question would be how the tourism consultancy measured the direct value of tourism in Cape Town, as there is no database that the consultancy could have consulted to make its calculations. The same question can be asked about how it estimated the employment numbers, as no industry survey has been conducted to our knowledge.
Ironic is Councillor Pascoe’s closing paragraph (‘We will continue to use our resources to encourage tourism and the subsequent investment into our City, thereby creating work opportunities for the people that live in our City‘), which is grossly misleading, in that the City of Cape Town has removed the role of Destination Marketing from Cape Town Tourism and subsequently reduced its budget by a few million Rand. In addition, it has created its own City of Cape Town Tourism, Events, and Marketing Directorate, which in the past 18 months or so has not delivered on any constructive or visible destination marketing (or ‘place marketing‘, as they call it), other than a few soccer matches which Councillor Pascoe has brought to his ailing Cape Town Stadium, but they have made no impact on tourism at all!
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Porfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter: @WhaleCottage
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