THE four-year-old Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC) has posted its best-ever financial results of a turnover exceeding R100m (up 28%) and a profit of R9,1m for the year ending June 30, 2007.

“There is no doubt the 2006/7 financial year was the most exciting in the history of the CTICC,” md Dirk Elzinga told a press conference in Cape Town. “These are seriously better than anticipated results.” CTICC's operating results were up 52% and its contribution to its holding company Convenco increased by R10,4m to R30,3m. Convenco is owned by the City of Cape Town, the Western Cape government and SunWest International. Cash flow available for planned capital expenditure totaled R32,4m (versus R13,8m in 2005/6). Income from venue hire was up 25%, from food and beverage up 28%, and from parking up 38% despite unchanged tariffs. Direct costs rose by 45% and indirect costs by 12%. Highlights included an R2,4bn contribution to the country's GDP (R6,8bn since 2002/3) that was expected to grow to R18,3bn in the next five years.  CTICC created more than 9 000 jobs in 2006/7 (3 796 directly and 5 343 indirectly), aiming to increase this to 115 333 jobs in the next five years.  Elzinga said CTICC outperformed most of its annual performance targets. During the past year, it accommodated 509 events (139% more than the 344 target), including 46 international conventions, 31 national conferences, 19 exhibitions, seven trade fairs, 69 banquets, 26 special events and 311 other events. He said CTICC hosted 45 576 international delegates for about five days each, resulting in 248 163 delegate days, an increase of 141% on last year. Each delegate spent on average R2 500 per day. “To illustrate, these numbers could fill two hotels the size of the ArabellaSheraton Hotel next door year-round, so CTICC is definitely impacting positively on business tourism.” He said CTICC hosted 65% of all international meetings in South Africa and one out of every three international conferences in Africa. More than 40% of exhibitions were annual repeat events and average occupancies of exhibition halls increased by 4% to 47,5% This compared well with the 56% to 58% occupancy of the world's busiest exhibition halls in Germany. Quick expansion was needed to accommodate expected growth in international conferences and repeat exhibitions, Elzinga said.