The immediate future of Cape Town Tourism appears secure with promises of a new three-year tourism marketing and visitor services mandate from the City of Cape Town, effective 2013 to 2016.
The City is committed to signing a new service level agreement to this effect by the end of March and has also committed to raising CTT’s grant funding from R36m to R39m a year, totaling R117m over the next three years, says the City’s Directorate for Tourism, Events and Marketing (TEAM) Executive Director, Anton Groenewald. 
He says the announcement comes four months ahead of schedule to show the City’s commitment to stabilising CTT and to demonstrate its effectiveness in local government delivery. This comes after the City was widely criticised earlier this year when it sent out a message of no confidence in CTT when it cut its funding, curtailed its mandate and established its own rival destination marketing directorate. 
Although the promised raised funding still falls short of previous budget contributions, Groenewald says a R2,1m shortfall will be reduced to less than      R500 000 through a new revenue strategy and expense cuts, including turning CTT’s physical visitor services centres into digital ones. 
CTT chairperson, Sabine Lehmann, has welcomed the City’s move as a positive development for tourism marketing because it will give CTT long-term stability and allow for greater strategic planning. CTT, to date, has been working on annual budget allocations from the City.  She says CTT looks forward to working with the City to fully realise Cape Town’s tourism potential. Adds CTT Spokesperson, Skye Grove: “We are very optimistic about our new partnership with the City. It has come to the party to ease the uncertainty that existed in the industry about our future.” 
There is, however, still no absolute clarity on the difference between ‘destination’ and ‘tourism’ marketing and the division of labour between CTT and TEAM.  Groenewald says TEAM’s intention is not to re-create CTT but to promote Cape Town more broadly than just through tourism, e.g. through sports events and the 2014 World Design Capital campaign. He says CTT’s new SLA will identify projects where the City will draw on CTT for marketing, technological and logistical support, while visitor services and clearly identifiable tourism marketing functions will be CTT’s responsibility. “There are, however, grey spaces and that’s why this needs to be an ongoing conversation between mature partners,” he says.