One of the first jobs of the newly launched Western Cape Economic Development Partnership (EDP) is to bring together the province’s divided tourism industry, says Western Cape Tourism Minister, Alan Winde.

“The EDP needs to bring the tourism industry together, because it is divided along political/municipal boundary lines. We need to pull that together. It is one of the first jobs that we need to do and probably will be one of the first wins of the EDP,” he told Tourism Update. Insufficient airlift between the US and Africa – currently totalling merely 36 flights a week compared with 2 500 flights a week between the US and Europe – was another priority, he said.

The EDP was launched formally by Western Cape Premier, Helen Zille, Winde and Cape Town Executive Mayor, Patricia de Lille, at a high-profile ceremony at the Cape Town Film Studios near Stellenbosch on April 26. About 250 stakeholders from industry bodies, development agencies, municipalities, and NGOs attended the event.

The EDP is an independent, non-partisan, non-government, cross-sector, voluntary membership-based organisation that from now on will lead, co-ordinate and drive economic growth and job creation in the Western Cape.

Initiated by Winde, it is the result of extensive research and consultation over the past 15 months by a steering committee led by EDP convener, Andrew Boraine.  He said the EDP’s success would be assessed in terms of quarterly economic growth.

National government, the province and Cape Town together provided R2,4m seed capital for the planning stage, with R3,5m from the province and R2m from Cape Town earmarked for the first year of operation. In the long term, its members will fund the EDP. Boraine cautioned that meaningful change would not happen overnight but could take up to 10 years. One of the first projects to be co-ordinated would be the Western Cape Government’s Future Cape 2040 initiative, a visioning and planning process for the regional economy.

Some 40 organisations have signed up as EDP founding members, among them at least eight tourism-orientated organisations: Cape Town Tourism, the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC), Wesgro (now incorporating Cape Town Routes Unlimited), the Cape Winelands District Municipality, Fair Trade in Tourism South Africa, Fedhasa Cape, the Western Cape Fine Food Initiative and the Cape Craft and Design Institute. Member organisations have until May 21 to nominate up to 15 board members.

Fedhasa Cape chairman, Dirk Elzinga, said: “I do hope the tourism industry subscribes to it. It is a matter of working together. Our (hospitality) industry in 2010 overinvested and the ROI is not happening, so the more we work together the better. The hospitality industry already contributes its fair share by creating a lot of real work for unskilled and less skilled labour. That explains why Fedhasa Cape embraces this initiative wholeheartedly and why we have signed up as a founding member. It’s important for the economy of the Western Cape and the country at large.”

CTICC CEO, Rashid Toefy, said co-operation among all tourism players was severely lacking in the Western Cape. EDP-type partnerships needed to filter down to a secondary, industry sector level. He said joint action was needed and not just debate, as was already taking place at the Joint Association Members Meeting Sessions (JAMMS) incorporating CTT, Fedhasa Cape, the Southern African Association for the Conferencing Industry and the Southern Africa Tourism Services Association (SATSA) Western Cape.