As part of an initiative embarked up on by the city of Cape Town to combat tourism seasonality, the second annual Cape Town Golf festival (CTGF) was recently held from August 19 to 24.

The six-day event was the first in a series of key initiatives, spearheaded by Cape Town Mayor Patricia De Lille, to combat seasonality, and was organised by the Federated Hospitality Association of South Africa (Fedhasa) Cape, with the support of the City of Cape Town, Cape Town Tourism, Wesgro and Accelerate Cape Town (collectively known as the Local Organising Committee – LOC).

De Lille had mandated the LOC to market the city in the ‘out of season’ months, and Reg Ferreira – Director of the golf tournament – said that was what they adhered to, and while the first two events were targeted more at the domestic market, Ferreira said next year’s focus would change. “I always maintained it would take us up to three years to start getting the international buyers to get involved. Our primary focus to date was South Africa and local African countries. [But next year] our marketing efforts will be to focus on all the inbound golf operators selling South Africa. Hopefully, they will also market this at the International Golf Travel Market in November.”

Ferreira said the summer months were the most popular for tourists visiting the Cape – October to April – but in the other months most golf clubs suffered with fewer feet through the doors. “My personal biggest worry,” said Ferreira “are the caddies in Cape Town not earning through these winter months, because of lower numbers of players.” But the direct bookings more than doubled compared with the previous year’s event, proof of Cape Town’s attraction, as well as the success of the festival.

The 2018 festival was hosted across four golf courses: Metropolitan, Milnerton, Royal Cape and Westlake. Ferreira said, for 2019 there would be some changes to cater for the inbound market. “Metropolitan will fall away, and King David Mowbray – home of the PGA Cape Town Open this year – will join us in 2019. Metropolitan can only host 60 players, and I firmly believe we will get far more than that next year. Metropolitan was great and it’s always sad to see a club not participating again. However, our philosophy is to change golf clubs every year. For example, in our first year we had Clovelly and Durbanville, which were replaced by Westlake and Metropolitan in 2018.”

Jeff Rosenberg, Chairperson of Fedhasa Cape, has applauded the efforts led by Ferreira to keep Cape Town top of mind 365 days a year with this initiative. “Several of our accommodation member establishments put together special golf packages in order to enhance the Cape Town Golf Festival offerings to make it more attractive for out-of-towners to participate in the event.”

These packages and experiences proved successful for not just accommodation establishments, but restaurants and wine farms too, so Ferreira said a similar approach would be taken next year. “Our packages (with accommodation) are all earmarked for inbound players. Our main aim is to increase our occupancies during this period. We had nine Fedhasa members with special packages who, through their vast databases tried to sell bed-nights (six-night packages). However, due to circumstances beyond our control we only started marketing it in April this year. So the marketing [for next year] will start 12 months in advance. This will give the international tour operators ample time to sell it.”

Ferreira said the event organisers and the City of Cape Town hoped that the Cape Town Golf Festival would become an event on the city’s calendar, providing huge opportunity to enhance tourism to the region, as well as augment and extend the experience of tourists. “Golf has always been a great sector, and it certainly brings a different dimension of tourists. They do not mind spending. At the incredible price at which we market the CTGF, it is a steal for them: due to the great assistance from all involved in Cape Town, I managed to negotiate the same price for 2019, with no increase…and many of them [tourists] will lengthen their stay by up to a week or two.”

The 2019 festival will be held from August 18 to 24.