Cape Town - Kirstenbosch’s “Boomslang” canopy walkway is pulling the crowds and pushed up visitor numbers to the botanical garden by 72 percent in June.
This huge swell of interest pointed to the importance of repositioning popular attractions to lure visitors during the off-peak months, Enver Duminy, chief executive officer of Cape Town Tourism, said.
Other drawcards included the V&A Waterfront, Cape Point, Robben Island and Table Mountain Aerial Cableway.
Seasonality was one of the biggest challenges for Cape Town Tourism, which has just signed a three-year contract with the City of Cape Town to function as the city’s dedicated tourism agency.
Duminy said the agency was tackling the drop in visitor numbers during the down period by doing monthly and seasonal research to get a snapshot of who is visiting the city, and when.
“We need to take seasonality seriously. There is an immediate fall-out over Easter and this affects pricing.”
Another review that will soon be presented to the city deals with “price gouging” where venues push up their prices during a big event.
Duminy was upbeat about Cape Town Tourism’s financial performance as it starts a new 35-month contract with the city. “We spend all the money that we get and we have incentivised the team to cut costs.”
He said the Cape Town Tourism’s self-generated income for this financial year was R6.6-million, 15 percent higher than the annual target.
This meant it had its own financial reserves, and was no longer “like a charity organisation”, he said.
The three-year agreement with the city would give certainty to Cape Town Tourism’s staff and to tourism.
“Our vision is to be recognised globally as an innovative customer-centric tourism marketing association which excels at seamlessly connecting all aspects of the tourism industry in Cape Town by March 2017.”
Duminy said the organisation would be looking at marketing Cape Town to the rest of Africa. In a prior statement, he said there was “huge untapped tourism potential on the continent”.
Garreth Bloor, the city’s mayoral committee member for tourism, events and marketing, welcomed Cape Town Tourism’s plans to position the city as the “African Riviera”.
Tourism contributes significantly to the city’s economy, and creates about 34 500 permanent work opportunities and 15 000 temporary positions.
Cape Town trophy shelf:
Cape Town is tops – some of the accolades in the past three months:
l Eighth-friendliest city, according to Conde Nast readers.
l One of the world’s 15 best Waterfront Cities, by Huffington Post.
l The Most Beautiful City in the World, by Buzzfeed.
l Best place to visit in Africa and The Middle East, by US News.
l Camps Bay beach was voted 24th-best beach in the World, by Traveller’s Choice Awards 2014.
Cape Argus