Statement by the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Economic Opportunities and Asset Management Alderman James Vos
I am pleased to announce that the City of Cape Town’s Draft Tourism Development Framework (TDF) was adopted by Council recently after the public participation process.
Cape Town has vast cultural and heritage diversity and this gives us the opportunity to take a new immersive approach to cultural tourism. By taking this approach, with the core focus on creating more community-based offerings, I intend to make tourism a game-changer for our city.
I have been working with my team on this exciting framework since I was appointed as the Mayoral Committee Member for Economic Opportunities that includes the Tourism portfolio one year ago. My immediate priority is to ensure the efficient implementation of the TDF so that we boost cultural experiences and help diversify tourism products. This will then translate into more involvement from specific communities who will benefit economically from their participation.
The TDF provides a tourism development strategy and implementation framework for the City between 2019 and 2023. This framework will be the basis for the annual program of work and for preparing our tourism budget for the next five years.
The TDF builds on the previous framework and consists of five key goals which includes the following:
Ensuring visitor comfort
Improving and diversifying products and experiences
Stimulating demand
General community involvement, benefits and support
Planning and organising for growth
The newly developed tourist offerings will bring new products and exciting experiences to life in areas that were previously marginalised and excluded from the tourism landscape.
I believe that products, such as the township cultural experience, will show that we are an inclusive city, ready to break barriers with ground-breaking tourism offerings that open up new opportunities.
We are fully committed to the tourism sector and will invest in programmes and initiatives that foster economic growth in this industry.
It therefore gives me great pleasure to also launch the Tourism Monitor programme, funded by the Department of Tourism. This programme will promote access to education and training opportunities to 50 school leavers by providing skills and knowledge linked to various local and national tourist sites.
These Tourism Monitors will be deployed to several areas and attractions throughout the entire metropole including Langa, Khayelitsha, Hout Bay and the CBD. The Monitors will be entrusted with enhancing the experience and wellbeing of local and international tourists.
Their tasks will include acting as a point of reference and offering recommendations to tourists visiting various popular sites. They will also assist tourists who have lost their bearings and require directions. These young Tourist Monitors will also patrol identified tourist hotspots to ensure they are safe and report any incidents to relevant enforcement agencies.
Programmes like these prove that the City is serious about creating job opportunities for our unemployed youth.
Safety is a top priority for the City of Cape Town, and we are putting various measures in place to make this city safer for tourists and residents alike, and it will also help promote a healthy tourism ecosystem
Tourism accounts for roughly 300 000 jobs in our city. This makes tourism a sector with great growth and employment potential.
The City’s objective is to facilitate sustainable job creation. I want to do this by providing an environment in which ‘tourism-preneurs’ can flourish and by transforming the tourism landscape in Cape Town into a thriving ecosystem.
As a City, we are ready to take tourism to the next level.
The TDF and the Tourism Monitors are just some of the steps my department are taking towards realising this vision and which makes me very excited about the future benefits for the people of Cape Town.
Source: City Of Cape Town