Why the mayor of Cape Town welcomes tourists in his city despite anti-visitor trends
We need more tourists. Other cities might be facing challenges related to the industry but we’re here with open arms. Tourism does three things. It stimulates construction, injects foreign revenue into a city and creates jobs. With our unemployment rate at 22 per cent, getting people out of poverty is our primary goal. This has been made feasible by the vast supply chain of tourism.
The industry has rapidly grown in the past five years. Cape Town now has 106,000 people working in the sector. There are many facets to cultivating this. For the short term, there’s marketing, which helps to draw attention. But you never really know what will strike a chord with travellers. For policymakers, the adoption of emerging, forward-thinking schemes is crucial.
One initiative that has been a success is Cape Town Air Access. The city puts in a small amount of seed capital, which is matched by private corporations and investors. We then approach airlines that might not have considered offering flights to the city and present them with this money, which is used to help cover losses incurred by operating flights here until the route becomes better known. Not only has this revolutionised our connectivity to the rest of the world but it has also put people who might not have considered a trip here on planes. The new flights have opened us up to many markets across Europe, Asia and South America.
We’re adopting smaller changes too in order to lay the foundations for more arrivals. At the end of 2024 we reformed our visa system to get rid of antiquated processes that required people to apply in person. India has had a huge explosion in middle-class travellers in the past decade and it is a market that we would like to tap into – something that these policy changes facilitate.
For cities, tourism can be a force for hope, opportunity, social mobility and growing prosperity. Our efforts are working but we need to keep at it.
Born in Plettenberg Bay, Geordin Hill-Lewis has been the mayor of Cape Town since 2021. As told to Monocle’s Rory Jones.
