Cape Business News: Cape Town named world’s top festival destination

Cape Town was once again shown to be top of its class when it was voted “World’s Leading Festival and Events Destination” at the 2018 World Travel Awards in Portugal on the weekend.

Dan Plato, Cape Town’s Executive Mayor, told IOL that the award is not just a win for the city, but for the entire country. “We want Cape Town to position itself as a place where the world can access Africa and Africa can access the world. Continuing to host events of an international standard will make this vision a reality,” he said.

He also added that ‘red tape’ needs to be eradicated to encourage more investment in, and attract more major international events into, the city .

A strategy has been put in place to achieve this, with four focus areas: job creation, economic impact, social cohesion, and destination marketing.

In the previous financial year, the City issued 1 277 event permits, and supported a total of 180 events.

There are eight events slated to take place in town over the next year, which all together will contribute more than R3-billion to the local economy. Plato added that in addition these events will create more than 20 000 temporary jobs.

Major events hosted this year included the Cape Town International Jazz Festival, the Cape Town Cycle Tour – the world’s biggest timed cycle race – and the Design Indaba Conference.

The Jazz Festival receives approximately 3 400 festival-goers annually, generating R600-million for the city’s economy. It is the largest jazz festival in Africa, and the fourth-largest in the world.

City officials were part of an inter-governmental delegation representing Cape Town’s bid to host the 2023 Netball World Cup, which would add yet another international event to the city’s résumé.

The delegation went to Singapore to do this and have since returned.