Extra airport capacity and changing marketing strategies would ensure an increase in tourism from the United Arab Emirates, said Western Cape Finance, Economic Development and Tourism MEC, Alan Winde.
On a recent visit to Dubai, Winde sought to strengthen bilateral agreements and work with industry to create a joint marketing agreement which will increase tourism between the Western Cape and the UAE.
He said the main reason that the UAE had been singled out as a potential source market was because of its being a major gateway. “They’ve just started building their new airport, which will have capacity for over 200 million passengers. So it makes sense having them as a very strategic key partner. If they are committed to becoming a gateway we need to make sure that we do enough to feed in and out of that gateway.
The Western Cape was well-connected with various cities in the UAE, with Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad already flying directly to Cape Town on a regular basis, said Winde. “The EIA (environmental impact assessment) is being done at the moment for realigning the runway in Cape Town so we can take A380 aircraft and we need to be able to take a bigger aircraft. Over the next couple of years there’s going to be a total investment of nearly R11 billion going into our own airport.”
Along with airport improvements, Winde identified seasonality as another area within tourism that needed to be improved on. “The UAE is a very lucrative, high-end market. They are family holiday orientated, and we’re focusing on seasonality because, during their summer season it’s very hot in the UAE and when people take their holidays they want to get out of the heat and we are saying ‘well, this is the perfect opportunity to come to South Africa’.”
Now that the key focus areas had been identified, a plan needed to be devised, Winde said. Within the next couple of weeks, various parties involved will go public on some of the joint marketing initiatives to be done. The action plan is then expected to be signed off by Cabinet in August. Marketing initiatives will work both ways with outbound SA operators promoting travel to Dubai and vice versa.
According to Winde, the partnership forms part of Project Khulisa, which was embarked on last year and aims to identify areas in SA’s economy that government should be focusing on to get the best economic growth and job creation, one of these areas being tourism.
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“In the Western Cape Tourism is the biggest engine room in our economy. It employs 204 000 people; in the last five years it grew at 6.5%; jobs grew at 7.8% and it’s worth just over R18 billion to our economy,” Winde said.
