Cape Town - The Mother City's tourism agency is confident that the recent World Cup would have a multiplier effect on the number of future arrivals of international visitors to the city, despite the number of tourist arrivals during the event having been lower than expected.
Cape Town Tourism chief executive Mariette du Toit-Helmbold said though visitor numbers and bookings in Cape Town had not lived up to expectations - despite arrivals having been higher than in the same period in 2009 - the event would help to attract thousands of tourists to the city.
The organisation presented results on Wednesday of a number of weekly tourism industry surveys it had conducted. Toit-Helmhold believed the perception around price and crime had kept away more visitors.
About 200 000 fans visited the city during the World Cup and average occupancy levels for the event were about 55 percent - about 15 percent up on the same period for 2009.
"The 2010 World Cup turned out to be a bumper winter season, rather than another peak season," said Du Toit-Helmhold, who added that final visitor numbers would be revealed in a full assessment by the City of the economic impact the World Cup had had on the city.
But despite this she said the current 1.8 million tourist arrivals in the city, could triple in the near future if just 0.5 percent of all those that visited the city during the event returned.
She said despite the lower number of bookings than expected, 90 percent of tourism businesses the organisation polled, believed the event had had a positive impact on the city.
"Our focus has never been on the short term benefits of hosting this event, but rather on maximising the long term benefits and changing the opinion the world has of us, converting soccer fans into fans of Cape Town.
"Our aim is to double the economic impact of tourism by 2020 and the successful hosting of the World Cup in Cape Town in winter will definitely make this target more attainable," she said.
She said that over the last four years, the city has almost doubled its capacity, with eight new hotels being added in the last two years.
Felicity Purchase, Mayco Member Economic Development and Tourism for the City of Cape Town agreed that the hosting of major events during Cape Town's winter season was critical to unlocking economic growth for the city.
"Events can play an important role in addressing seasonality, which is one of the greatest stumbling blocks in the development of Cape Town as a year-round tourism destination," she said.
Turning to the 2020 Olympic Games, Purchase said unlike Durban which was considering putting in a bid to host the games, Cape Town had not yet made a decision on whether to bid or not.
"To be quite honest with you I think it is premature," said Purchase, who pointed out that the city was short on venues such as a really good athletics track
She said the city would need to undertake a study to assess what infrastructure was needed in order to fulfil the requirements for the bid.
She believed the city had been "na«ve" about its ability to host an Olympic Games when it put in a bid for 2004 games, some years ago.
Du Toit-Helmbold said Cape Town Tourism's Winter Campaign would launch this week and would be marketed locally through selected Gauteng radio stations and billboards and globally via a partnership with travel advisory website Tripadvisor.com.
