According to the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) Africa Chapter, Cape Town is the top destination in Africa for meetings and conferences. This is a great achievement and I look forward to the year ahead and the many benefits the thousands of delegates to these meetings, conventions and conferences bring to the city.
The Mining Indaba kicks-off on Monday, 3 February 2020 and will showcase why Cape Town is rated the top African city for international conventions.
The City has been a proud host of the Mining Indaba for the past 26 years and it remains one of our signature annual conferences, directly bringing in revenue and trade, as well as indirectly creating goodwill and new partnerships.
As the largest mining event in Africa and the world, the Mining Indaba attracts a large number of investors, CEOs and mining executives from across the globe for this leading deal-making forum.
The iconic Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC) will once again host the Mining Indaba.
In the 2018/19 financial year, the CTICC continued to deliver a meaningful return for the City’s investment by contributing R4.5 billion to the Western Cape economy, creating 14 620 jobs over the same period as well as procuring 87% of goods and services from locally-based suppliers.
Since the CTICC opened 16 years ago, a total of 130 465 jobs have been created and a staggering R47.3 billion has been added to the national economy. This is no small feat.
A total of 560 events were hosted at the CTICC in the last financial year. This brought in 420 000 attendees and importantly, close onto 31 300 international delegates. Given all the wonderful things Cape Town has to offer, by hosting international visitors we are able to increase the likelihood of them returning, but also staying longer and spending more money.
One of my overarching objectives to make my portfolio the ‘Growth Directorate’ of the City by focussing our energy on attracting investment, which in turn creates jobs and leads to economic growth.
We provide funding to the Convention Bureau, within Wesgro, to specifically focus on promoting the City of Cape Town as the destination of choice for meetings, incentive travel offered by international businesses, conferences and events (MICE).
The department of Enterprise and Investment has many initiatives in place which make it easier to do business, assist with smart procurement and supplier development. We will continue to find ways to ensure that benefits from visiting delegates trickle down to the residents of Cape Town. Combined with this, we will continue to work hard on securing more MICE to ensure that the other linked sectors such as food and beverage, accommodation and transportation can all benefit from the spin-offs that visiting delegates bring to our city.
Cape Town will play host to many more MICE events in the coming year, especially the World Ophthalmology, Spaceops and the HIV Research for Prevention Conferences. These conventions will attract almost 17 000 delegates with yet more positive knock-on benefits for our city.
Through the Delegate Boosting programme, we encourage delegates to stay longer, experience our amazing city and, of course, spend lots of money to ensure that we get the most benefit for residents.
My next step is to ensure that the Delegate Boosting programme partners with Cape Town Tourism to ensure visitors can take advantage of what Cape Town has on offer, and to visit as many of our great attractions as possible. One great example of an exciting tourism offer is the new Curated Khayelitsha tours.
For Cape Town to compete globally and achieve inclusive socio-economic growth, we will continue to invest in initiatives that deliver positive outcomes for the residents of Cape Town.