CAPE Town Tourism (CTT) looks ahead to another tough and busy year during which it will focus on aligning its visitor services with its new marketing mandate, says chairman, Ian Bartes. Priorities for 2009 include, amongst others, re-designing the look of CTT’s Visitor Information Centres (VICs), beginning November 2008; upgrading the call centre by end 2009; growing corporate affiliate membership; and coordinating various 2010 projects. Bartes points out that CTT’s self-generated income increased by 17,32% in the past year to R7m but this still fell short of the R8,2m budget. Reasons for this include
· a knock-on effect of membership fee adjustments;
· R500 000 worth of donations which didn’t come through;
· bookings that were R400 000 below budget but 16% up on 2007;
· R100 000 less income from the V&A Waterfront information centre because CTT’s management contract was terminated by Cape Town Routes Unlimited.
Operating expenses were 12,4% below budget at R7,2m and operating costs were reduced by R1,5m over the past three years. CTT reported a R618 000 net loss for 2008.

What has CTT achieved to date?

· Bartes says CTT’s 20 visitor information centres (VICs) dealt with 3m enquiries (up 15% on 2007) and were visited by 150 000 visitors per month.
·  The VIC network was upgraded and expanded to Table Mountain, Strand and Noordhoek. New ones are planned for the V&A Waterfront, CTICC and Gordon’s Bay.
· Kiosks with multi-media plasma and touch-screens were opened. Prototypes of mobile unmanned VICs for 2010 were completed.
· CTT membership has grown 11% from 2007 to 2 453 businesses, which together generated a membership income of R2,1m.
· CTT this year supported 1 120 SMMEs and funded the membership fees of more than 200 black emerging businesses through its Membership Development Fund. Black and SMME membership grew by more than 200% in the past two years.
· CTT also trained and supported more than 136 accommodation providers to become bookable online.
· Staff were exposed to more than 400 member businesses during winter educational programmes.
· More than 1 500 quality assurance inspections were conducted and a customer care programme was introduced to monitor service delivery.
· CTT also initiated Joint Association Member Meetings (JAMMS) with Satsa, Fedhasa and Saaci.