Immediate. 22 May 2008 (Mossel Bay Tourism)

Cape Town Routes Unlimited (CTRU - the Western Cape’s destination marketing organisation) and the Western Cape Government’s Department of Economic Affairs and Tourism visited Mossel Bay Wednesday to present the province’s Domestic Marketing Campaign.Siyanda Qumana, the Deputy Director for Tourism Skills and Development, placed the campaign in the context of the raft of legislation and policies which govern tourism in South Africa. At national level, he said, these included the Constitution, the Intergovernmental Relations Framework Act, the Public Finance Management Act, the National Growth and Development Strategy and the Accelerated and Shared Growth-South Africa (ASGISA - which aims to halve poverty and unemployment by 2014).

These policies and statutes are further enumerated in the Department of Trade and Industry’s Tourism Sector Strategy, the 1996 Government White Paper on Development and Promotion of Tourism in South Africa, the Tourism Amendment Act and the Tourism Second Amendment Act.

“Within this framework, all provinces in the country are required to plan and initiate the development of all dimensions of the Industry; lobby for the provision of growth-unlocking infrastructure in the tourism industry; regulate the industry; support the protection of our cultural and environmental heritage; and market themselves as destinations,” he said.

Thus the Western Cape has promulgated its own legislative and policy framework which includes the Constitution of the Western Cape, the Provincial Growth and Development Strategy Green Paper of 2006, the Micro-economic Development Strategy, the 1996 White Paper on Sustainable Tourism Development and Promotion, and the Western Cape Tourism Act - which provides for the establishment of CTRU as the destination marketing organisation.

“Tourism is identified as a high priority sector for growth and broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE),” said.

“The Western Cape is South Africa’s most developed tourism region. The industry contributes about 10% to the province’s gross regional product - and that figure is growing - and it also provides about 10% of our employment and has the potential to create many more jobs and alleviate poverty.”

Mr. Qumana said that the Minister for Tourism in the Western Cape had identified various priorities for 2008/2009. These included developing targeted and cost-effective marketing strategies which would be implemented by CTRU; developing a Tourism BEE Transformation Strategy and implementation plan and a programme to develop an appropriately skilled and highly productive workforce; developing tourism infrastructure; and increasing the Tourism Tiered Support System Programme to addresses the needs of entrepreneurs at every level.

Calvyn Gilfellan, CEO of CTRU, began his presentation by saying that the name ‘Cape Town Routes Unlimited’ was a problem for the organisation due to the confusion it creates. “We are not here to market Cape Town alone,” he said, “but to market the Province as a whole,” and he added that the name would shortly be brought up for review.

He said that the aims of CTRU’s domestic marketing campaign were to increase the number of trips during the off-peak period (May to September) by 5% and to generate awareness for the Cape as an all-year-round holiday destination.

“We’re going to have to talk about the non-summer attractions and we’re going to invite South Africans to re-evaluate the Western Cape by shifting perceptions during the notorious winter months,” he said.

“We also have to start to address other barriers such as exclusivity and to ensure that we talk to Black South Africans” - many of whom, he said, saw the Cape as an unwelcoming destination.

He said that the campaign would reveal “the Cape that visitors don’t know,” and that the vision of the campaign was that “you can keep discovering the Western Cape.”

The brand message would be spread through radio, print and on-line advertising (such as the Sunday Times Lifestyle wrap-around which appeared earlier this month - and which included saleable Western Cape travel packages), as well as through competitions and events at various shopping malls in the northern regions of the country.

The effectiveness of the campaign would be measured by visitor numbers; ticket sales and the numbers of participants at special events; increased traffic to the CTRU website; the number of competition entries; and through the number of packages sold.

Comments from the floor after the presentations concentrated on the question of transformation in the tourism industry - especially as it affected people in this region. Mossel Bay resident Clay Springfield of EdenGro said that the level of frustration was unacceptably high because the perception was that BBBEE benefited only a small number of select people in select areas, and that people in rural areas were unable to access either finance or the tourism market.

This kind of frustration, he said, was at the heart of the xenophobic violence which the country was presently experiencing.

Various other delegates also pointed to their own frustrations at the difficulties they encountered in trying to help previously disadvantaged individuals to enter the tourism industry.

Both Mr. Qumana and Mr. Gilfellan undertook to take positive steps to attend to the delegates’ concerns.

Speaking after the event, Mossel Bay Tourism’s marketing manager, Debra-Lee Bouwer, said that Mossel Bay was currently running its own winter campaign, which included advertising and editorials placed in in-flight magazines and in Getaway and Mooiloop magazines (both of which will also be running competitions with holidays in Mossel Bay as prizes).

“We’re also advertising on-line to both the tourism trade and consumers, we’ve arranged various media tours which will take place during May and June, and we’re promoting a number of packages through Thompson’s Holidays and on our own web site, www.visitmosselbay.co.za,” she said.

ENDS 927 WORDS

More Information:
Debra Bouwer - Marketing Manager, Mossel Bay Tourism marketing@visitmosselbay.co.za | Telephone: +27(0)44 691 2202
www.visitmosselbay.co.za
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