Riding the wave of a bumper holiday season

There's now no doubt about it - Cape Town and many other parts of the Western Cape are riding a bumper holiday season that will see visitors pump billions of rands into the economy.

Some say it's the best domestic tourism season in several years. And we may have the tumbling rand to thank for a lot of it.

Others say it's just a lot better than expected, considering the slow economy and the fall-out from the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.

But everybody now feels a lot more positive about the future of tourism in the province, and that's good news for the region.

Western Cape Tourism Board chief executive officer Mike Fabricius said before the season started nobody had been sure how things would go, because of a tight winter and the September 11 disaster.

But positive feedback is now coming in from all over Cape Town and along the southern and eastern Cape coasts.

"The last time we had such a good season was three or four years ago. This will all filter through the economy," he said.

Fabricius said many tourists had probably decided to spend Christmas and New Year in Cape Town or at such resorts as Plettenberg Bay rather than overseas because of the weak rand, which reached R13 to the dollar at one stage and is now trading at just below R12.

"The regional tourism market is definitely better, but we would like to see it improve even more. Although we are having a very good season it is now a challenge to increase the length of both the domestic season and the international tourist season and perhaps even become a year-round destination," he said.

The high season domestically is December and January, while most overseas tourists visit in February or March.

Sheryl Ozinsky, manager of Cape Town Tourism, said the fact that the city had hosted so many entertainment and adventure projects had helped pull in visitors.

The Western Cape should make about R3-billion this December and January of annual tourism revenue of R17-billion.

"Yesterday we just could not find a vehicle for hire in the city; there are no vehicles for hire until January 3. It is also very hard to find accommodation right now, you have to search," she said.

Neil Markovitz, Western Cape chairman of the Federated Hospitality Association of South Africa, said occupancy figures at hotels were up on last year and this could be the best season in "a couple of years at least". The provincial average for hotel occupancy for December/January last year was between 60% and 65%.

"The encouraging thing about December is that we saw an increase in the first half of the month, which is usually the quieter period. This will help improve December figures as a whole.

"It is encouraging to see this growth, not only in the international market, but in the domestic market as well."

Markovitz said the devaluation of the rand probably had a lot to do with the improved domestic situation, but he believed good marketing had also paid off. "The hospitality industry now has a great opportunity to show what it can do."