Cape Town Tourism to tackle seasonality

CELEBRATING its tenth
anniversary this year,
Cape Town Tourism has
devised a strategy to focus
on three issues: income,
arrivals and seasonality.
This is according to Cape
Town Tourism ceo, Enver
Duminy, who says the
organisation’s simple, onepage
strategy is 25; 1,5;
365 referring to 25% selfgenerated
income; 1,5m
international visitors and
365 days a year.
Speaking at a recent
media brunch, Enver said
Cape Town Tourism currently
generated about 15% of its
income itself and wanted to
grow this to 25% in the near
future so that it could invest
more in the work it did. The
tourism body also aims
to increase international
arrivals from around 1,2m
currently to 1,5m.
However, one of the
biggest challenges for Cape
Town Tourism remains that
of seasonality. Enver says
it has been a challenge
for decades for the entire
industry, which is why
Cape Town Tourism in in
the process of developing
a seasonality index to
measure the fall-off from
high to low season.
According to Enver, once
it is possible to measure
this, it will help to find ways
to improve visitor numbers
during low season.
He says events are a good
way to attract more people
during the “dead spots” so
that the high season can
start earlier and last longer.
“Sometimes we are our
own worst enemies. We
say the weather is bad but
it’s not worse than other
markets. We need to look
at it collectively to address
the problem. It will take
time but we need to start
somewhere,” he says.