POLITICS

The WCape Cabinet welcomes the revival of tourism

Alan Winde |

April 21, 2024

CTIA data shows international arrivals increased by a whopping 21.07% year-on-year

Results of the Western Cape Government Cabinet Meeting

April 21, 2024

Prime Minister Alan Winde chaired a meeting of the Cabinet of the Western Cape Government (WCG) on Wednesday, April 18.

Addressing his cabinet colleagues ahead of the meeting, Prime Minister Winde emphasized the importance of long-term and future planning for the Western Cape to better prepare the province and its residents for – among other things – the increasing pressures of climate change.

“The WCG has already put in place long-term plans to better manage water use through the 15-year Western Cape Integrated Water Response Plan and to ensure the energy security of our province (the Western Cape Energy Resilience programme). But we have to look further into the future, perhaps a hundred years from now. We need to get long-term planning in place to mitigate the impact of severe weather events, such as the intense low that recently hit large parts of the Western Cape. “The reality is that we will experience more and more severe weather events on Tuesday – in the last eleven months alone we have experienced four major floods, wind and weather-related events and one of the worst fire seasons in December and January. As of January 30, we had 18 serious fires managed by our disaster management staff. This is our reality and as a government and province we need to think about how we build resilience for our longer-term future,” said Prime Minister Winde.

Key issues discussed by the Cabinet included:

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Tourism

The government welcomed the latest tourism data for the province. Airports Company South Africa’s latest data for Cape Town International Airport (CTIA) shows strong growth in arrivals for March 2024. The number of international passengers increased to 142,485 during the month. This is an impressive increase of 21.07% year-on-year. The number of domestic passengers rose to 316,351, an increase of 10.1% year on year.

Preliminary figures for the first three months of 2024 show that 466,469 international terminal passengers arrived at CTIA, supporting more than 9,300 jobs across the province. Contributing to the tourism boom was the successful cruise ship season, which heralded a particularly special moment when Cape Town Queen Mary And Queen Victoria docked.

“The cruise industry brings significant economic benefits and employment to this province. I know that traffic congestion can frustrate us at times, but it just reminds us that we need to look at improving both public and private transport systems in Cape Town to respond to these intense periods of traffic activity. Rail must be the backbone of the rebuilding of our public transport system and that is why we are doing everything we can to get the central line operational again. But as part of our future planning, we as a province must have more autonomy to manage our own public transport system,” said Prime Minister Winde.