Western Cape business tourism on its up

Cape Town’s credentials as a competitive player in the meetings and events market are growing significantly. The city is continuously making strides in cementing its presence in the associations market. Role-players including the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC), hospitality industry, airlines and professional conference organisers are constantly rising to available opportunities.

In 2006 alone, nine international association bids were secured by Cape Town Routes Unlimited’s Convention and Events Bureau. These bids will bring approximately 24 800 delegates to the destination with a combined estimated economic impact of more than R232 million between 2007 and 2014. They include the 5th IAS HIV Pathogenesis and Treatment Conference with 5 000 delegates in 2009, the Medical Informatics Conference with 3 000 delegates and IEEE Globecom Conference with 2 000 delegates in 2010, International Academy of Pathology conference with 2 000 delegates in 2012, and World Pharma 2014 (17th IUPHAR World Congress of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology) with 10 000 delegates in 2014.

It is crucial that Cape Town and the Western Cape takes full advantage of marketing opportunities South Africa’s 2010 Soccer World Cup is providing the city, province and country with, and the way in which the tournament is already profiling South Africa.

In the 2005/2006 financial year, nineteen bids were secured for Cape Town and an additional seventeen submitted during this period, which have the potential to generate new business between 2007 and 2016. The combined direct economic impact of bids secured and in progress is some R436 million. This includes international association congresses, corporate meetings and incentives.

The beauty of business tourism for a destination is that approximately 35% of delegates to an international conference return to the destination as leisure tourists within five years of the conference taking place. Conference delegates normally also tell friends and family back in their home countries about the destination they have just visited.

Destination’s largest conference yet held in Cape Town

In December last year, Cape Town played host to its largest conference yet when it welcomed approximately 12 700 delegates to the 19th World Diabetes Congress. The conference, held from 3 to 7 December 2006 at the city’s state-of-the-art convention centre, was a benchmark event for the destination, proving that it can successfully host events of this magnitude and that it is ready to do so in the future.

The expected direct economic impact of the 19th World Diabetes Congress on Cape Town and the Western Cape was more than R80 million. Hosting this event showed how conferences, of this scale and smaller, profit the various links in the tourism value chain by contributing to the growth, development and transformation of the Western Cape tourism industry. It also illustrates how tourism plays an important role through its bids for conferences, as a vehicle for developmental, economic, environmental and social causes.

Besides the World Diabetes Congress, the biggest conferences hosted in the destination had been the International Urology Congress with 4 100 delegates and the International Society of Blood Transfusion Congress with 3 500 delegates, both in 2006, according to the CTICC.

Number One conference destination in Africa - ICCA

Cape Town is ranked the Number One convention destination in Africa. The city secures more than half of conference business coming into the continent. According to the International Congress and Convention Association’s (ICCA) Global Ranking Report for 2005, Cape Town retained its position as the only African city in the top 40 ranking report.

BestCities Global Alliance’s Certification Programme

Cape Town is also part of the BestCities Global Alliance, an alliance with eight partners on five continents. Besides Cape Town, the member cities are Copenhagen, Dubai, San Juan, Singapore, Melbourne, Edinburgh and Vancouver. The vision of the Alliance is to be recognized internationally for being innovative and represent the highest standards of service in the global meetings and convention industry.

Cape Town and the seven other member cities recently signed up for the first Global Certification Programme governing the service standards of convention bureaus. The Alliance launched the final phase when it met in Singapore for a two-day internal audit training programme in November last year. A Quality Policy was agreed upon and signed.

A further aim of the internal audit programme was to train the member cities of the Alliance to monitor the effectiveness of the Quality Management System, and to improve the quality and performance of convention bureaus. The Alliance`s primary goal in establishing this certification process is to be the only consortium of convention bureaus offering the world’s state-of-the-art service experience to the global meetings industry.

Through the past year, the BestCities Global Alliance worked closely with Lloyd’s Register Quality Assurance, Ltd. (LRQA) and the Mohamed Al Geziry Consultancy (MAGC) to develop and implement its certification programme.

Meetings Africa

Cape Town Routes Unlimited has sent a team to Johannesburg to attend Meetings Africa, the continent’s business tourism exhibition, which was held from 28 February to 1 March 2007.

Cape Town Routes Unlimited hosted a special ‘five senses’ breakfast on 28 February 2007 for approximately a hundred international and domestic hosted buyers and media, inspiring them to see, taste, smell, hear and feel some of Cape Town and the Western Cape’s most exquisite tourism offerings. A few hosted buyers and media from countries such as Germany and China had the chance to experience these first hand when they undertake familiarisation trips to the province immediately after Meetings Africa.

In their effort to create market access for tourism SMMEs (small, micro and medium enterprises) and to mainstream emerging entrepreneurs, Cape Town Routes Unlimited and the Tourism Enterprise Programme assisted four business tourism entrepreneurs from the Western Cape to attend Meetings Africa for the second consecutive year. Together with eight other exhibitors and the Cape Craft & Design Institute, they took part in a Western Cape exhibition at Meetings Africa. The entrepreneurs were also to attend a Business Tourism Conference a day before Meetings Africa started.

Society of Incentive & Travel Executives International Conference in 2010

Cape Town and the Western Cape played host to a component of the Society of Incentive & Travel Executives’ (SITE) Executive Summit, which ran concurrently with Meetings Africa. The Western Cape used this platform to impress and convince the SITE to hold their 2010 international conference in Cape Town.

By Michael Verikios