Three directors of Cape Town Tourism and heads of important Cape Town business tourism businesses have joined forces to make a plea for how “cool” Cape Town is in the winter months, a period typically plagued by seasonality, with far reduced accommodation bookings, which has an impact on all sectors of the tourism industry.
In an article in the Cape Times last week, Guy Lundy of Accelerate, Ian Bartes of Cape Town International airport, and Rashid Toefy of the Cape Town International Convention Centre wrote that of all South African cities, Cape Town is unique in its seasonality, which “makes it hard for the hospitality industry to be sustainable”. They add: “With 18 five-star hotels now operating in the city, we must find ways to increase visitor numbers during winter.” The tourism leaders says it is not a surprise that Cape Town sees so many restaurants opening and then closing, in that they build restaurants to meet capacity support in summer, but cannot see this through in the winter months when business falls away. They also state that the number of passenger arrivals in April and May is half of that in December and January.
They blame this on the positioning and marketing of Cape Town as mainly a leisure destination, which “always seem to feature the Waterfront, Clifton and the Winelands on their covers”, with not enough promotion of the city as an investment and business destination. Conference facilities, factories and office blocks do not feature in the city’s marketing collateral. They call for more direct international flights to Cape Town, and more flights between the city and other African cities, to make Cape Town a world business destination, and a global African city, given that it already has a world class airport, good hotels, excellent infrastructure, ‘some of the finest restaurants’, natural beauty, entertainment, world-class technology, sophisticated business networks, and a favourable time zone for doing business with the UK, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. 
To make Cape Town a global business destination, it needs to be considered for meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions (the M.I.C.E. market). The Convention Centre is ranked 34th in the world in size of business, and it plans to double its capacity to reach its goal of making the top ten list. Winter is an ideal time for conferences, the writers say, in that most activities take place indoors. Whilst conference delegates spend less time in a city on average, their average spend is higher than that of a leisure tourist. The writers also state that the businesses of the Western Cape, e.g. food and wine, oil and gas, boat-building and ship repair, design, film, technology, renewable energy, asset management, business process outsourcing and medical research should expose their businesses to overseas markets via exhibitions and conferences, to attract business travellers to Cape Town and the rest of the Western Cape, including Winelands, West Coast and Overberg towns.
The World Cup demonstrated what a good winter weather city Cape Town can be, with rain on only three of the match days, and snowfalls on the mountains for a short while during the soccer tournament month. The soccer fans were not put off by the rain and cold, and their ‘gees’ was not dampened in any way. This leads to a renewed call for the ‘green season’ to be marketed in the winter months. The cooler Cape weather is attractive to visitors from the Middle East, and the Asian countries, who have to endure hot and humid weather at that time. The writers also suggest a winter sale, which reduces accommodation, restaurants, and clothing, as is done in Paris, Singapore and New York. The writers seem unaware that the small accommodation industry has been leading the tourism sector for years, in reducing its rates by as much as half in winter. This year the restaurants in Cape Town and the Winelands also came to the party, and offered good winter specials, some even extending these into current summer specials.
We support the writers’ call for more events to be hosted to attract visitors, but it is sad to read that the City of Cape Town does not have enough funding to support big events (there is activity by Cape Town Routes Unlimited in marketing a small number of approved events, all hosted in summer months).
If Cape Town had no seasonality, airlines would fly into the city all year round, and would bring travellers, making tourism business more viable and reducing unemployment. It is for this reason that the business tourism leaders ask that the tourism industry get on board the Cape of Good Business!
It is interesting that the three writers are Board members of Cape Town Tourism, which focuses almost exclusively on leisure tourism, while the business tourism business that they are pleading for is in the domain of Cape Town Routes Unlimited, on which Board only ACSA is represented, and on which the three tourism leaders may have been able to make a greater contribution than at Cape Town Tourism.
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter: @WhaleCottage
