Statement by the City’s Mayoral Committe Member for Economic Opportunities and Asset Management, Alderman James Vos

On 16 December 2019, we will welcome United Airline’s New York to Cape Town direct flight that could bring 24 000 new travellers from the USA to our shores. I am particularly excited about the estimated R154 million in direct tourism spending that could be generated in the first year. Furthermore should this become a year-round flight it could generate nearly 900 jobs. If this is what just one new direct flight can achieve, imagine what impact adding new sustainable routes could bring in the coming years.

Today, I have the pleasure of attending the Cape Town Air Access year-in-review function. Air Access is an initiative funded by the City in partnership with other key stakeholders and implemented by the Air Access project team, a division of Wesgro.

I have focussed my portfolio on becoming the growth directorate. Connectivity forms part of my departmental strategy to connect Cape Town with key destinations in Africa and globally. A key component of the connectivity theme is the aviation economy. The importance of this is identified and outlined in the recently adopted Tourism Development Framework.

The more connected Cape Town is to other cities, the more opportunity there is to drive demand for goods and services, improve the ease of travel for business and leisure markets and to leverage the global platforms increased connectivity enables, allowing Cape Town to compete on the world stage.

There are a number of key focus areas in the aviation economy. Together with our strategic business partners, my directorate’s focus areas include:

Air access to increase the number of flights

Airport infrastructure: The expansion of Cape Town International Airport (CTIA) to ensure the infrastructure is in place to welcome more flights

Destination marketing to position Cape Town as a destination of choice for both business and leisure travel

Trade and cargo plans to leverage the successes of increased global connections to export goods from Cape Town

The mandate set out for Air Access is to expand current flight routes and to secure new routes to boost tourism and trade. Since its launch in 2015, this initiative contributed to the success of securing 16 new routes, 22 route expansions and increased the international seat capacity to 1,5 million two-way seats. This in turn helped the CTIA reach the 10,8 million passenger mark in 2018, adding an estimated R6 billion in direct tourism spending to the economy.

Reliable and efficient airport infrastructure forms the backbone of the travel and trade sector. The CTIA has already contributed R4,7 billion to the South African economy and supported over 43 000 direct, indirect and induced jobs.

The expansion of the CTIA, costing R7 billion over the next five years, will see the construction of a new realigned runway, the refurbishment of the domestic arrivals terminal and the expansion of the international terminal.

My team at the Enterprise and Investment Department is working with the airport to maximise the benefits of this expansion for local communities.

This investment will allow the airport to increase the flight capacity from 30 take-offs and landings per hour to 45. This will provide the perfect opportunity to secure yet more direct connections for passengers and cargo.

My team also represented Cape Town at the World Travel Market Africa and London earlier this year to market Cape Town as ‘the’ place to go for business and leisure. I am proud to say that we received an award for the ‘Best New Stand’ in London.

The next step is to grow Cape Town’s cargo footprint for export and increase the number of exports from Cape Town.

I look forward to working with our partners to see how we can grow the aviation economy, to increase business and leisure tourism, to connect Cape Town to more countries and to export more proudly Cape Town products to the rest of the world.

Source: City Of Cape Town