Trying to smooth out marketing inefficiencies in the Western Cape has landed Tourism MEC Alan Winde in the middle of a political stand-off between Cape Town Routes Unlimited (CTRU) - the provincial marketer - and Cape Town Tourism (CTT) - the city's marketing agency.
 
Winde has set himself the task of finding an a-political and “co-owned" solution to the currently fragmented and duplicated marketing effort in the Cape. He wants to do so as soon as possible to capitalise on the region's raised profile following the recent Soccer World Cup.
 
However, his draft proposals for a single new provincial destination marketing organisation and a single brand have already sparked opposition from the CTT board, with the city declaring its intent to retain the marketing services of the industry association. This in turn elicited an irritated response from the Minister last week who castigated CTT for dividing the tourism community. "This demonstrates the risks in putting premature statements of failure of process ahead of vision and trust in the process. It serves no purpose other than to arrest progress," he said. The CTT board declined to comment, saying it was still in discussions with the province and city and was consulting with the industry.
 
Winde, in an exclusive interview with Tourism Update Online, pointed out that at this stage of the process everything was up to debate and that it was up to all role players to find a mutually acceptable solution. His hope was for a "Team Tourism" encompassing all stakeholders, who would find a collectively defined way forward to make the Cape a globally competitive tourism destination. He said his proposal of a single destination marketing organisation might have been confusing. "I think that's where the confusion comes in. They all think I want to close them down, but I don't want to do that! I don't care what the mechanism looks like but I do believe it makes logical sense to have a provincial strategy to complement the national strategy!"
 
The problem, he said, was that currently there were effectively 31 marketing agencies in the province - 30 municipalities and one province - all selling themselves at international trade shows. In addition, the tax-paying tourism industry was also marketing the destination. This was not just confusing tourists, but also meant taxpayers' money was being spent multiple times in the same places.
 
To address the situation, Winde last year already set up a working committee consisting of the chief executives of CTRU and CTT but they failed to come up with a plan by December. A new working team was set up led by Winde himself and Alderman Felicity Purchase, Cape Town City Mayoral Committee Member for Economic Development and Tourism. A new provincial tourism marketing model was drafted. CTT, CTRU, all municipalities, their tourism agencies and the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) have been consulted and are required to comment by September 27.
 
From feedback received so far it appears "nobody wants CTRU, but I can't just close it down," Winde said. "CTT," he said, "doesn't want a provincial marketing body. Instead it wants all regional tourism organisations to do their own local and international marketing. The problem is we need to look at the whole province. I also have to ask how many people in the regional and local tourism organisations are marketers and at what stage do we call in the marketing gurus? Our policy in Government is to involve the industry as much as possible but a private-sector-driven board is a problem for SALGA and the municipalities.
 
"We need a strategy before everything else. Once we have a strategy, we need to go to the industry to get their input," he said. 
 
So while the shape of the future marketing model remains unclear, it is obvious that Winde has his work cut out for him to reconcile the diverse aspirations of all the stakeholders in the province.