THE new Board of Cape Town Routes Unlimited (CTRU) has successfully stabilised the organisation and has addressed all corporate governance and management competence issues raised by the City of Cape Town and the Auditor General. This was the message from CTRU Board chairman and former Sun International ceo, Peter Bacon, to the latest quarterly plenary session of the Western Cape Tourism Development Partnership (WCTDP), which took place in Cape Town last week. The WCTDP is a co-operative governance body consisting of high-level representatives of government, business, labour, civil society and education. It collectively develops policies, strategies and interventions within the context of the Western Cape Tourism Development Framework and ensures that all partners act in an aligned manner to achieve cost-effective use of collective resources.
 
Bacon said the Board had done its work, now it was up to the CTRU management to take the organisation forward. His comments related to challenging times experienced by CTRU after the City of Cape Town in June cut its 50% co-funding of the marketing organisation citing unhappiness with its governance, management and delivery.
 
Bacon said performance of executive management had been reviewed; all vacant executive management positions had been filled; and the organisation had survived an accounts audit unscathed.
 
He said ceo Calvyn Gilfellan was told to spend 60% of his time in marketing and not to get bogged down in the politics of running a government-owned organisation.  

Other priorities identified include the need for CTRU to be more competitive; for more focus on domestic and regional markets and more money for domestic marketing campaigns; for more in-depth research of international source markets; and for more aggressive and less reactive international marketing.
 
He said the Board had considered ways to cooperate with Cape Town Tourism and how to leverage the limited resources available to both organizations, mindful of the world economic slowdown and resulting declining long-haul travel. He said the FIT segment was showing a steep decline. ‘We will find ourselves under pressure in 2009. We are fortunate to have a weak currency and the 2010 lifeline. It will be important to leverage off this opportunity.” He added the 2009 elections would be watched closely by the world. “We are hoping there will be no political violence. All political parties should be working hard to ensure that there isn’t violence,” he said.
 
* Tourism MEC Garth Strachan called on all WCTDP stakeholders to produce a three-page document highlighting current blockages to tourism delivery in the province and to suggest ways of achieving the desired results.