Cape Town: The premier tourism gathering of Africa kicked off in Cape Town, for which Member of the Mayoral Committee for Economic Growth and Tourism – Alderman James Vos has released an official statement.
Alderman James Vos spoke on April 10, 2025 at the World Travel Market Tourism Investment Conference at the CTICC Global Stage. He welcomed the participants to Cape Town for Africa’s premier tourism gathering.
Vos speech began by mentioning that the city Cape Town has long been a place that captivates travellers, entices investors and drives economic opportunity. But as we all know, success in tourism (or any industry) doesn’t happen by chance, it happens by design.
A few years ago, I realised that if we truly wanted to take Cape Town’s visitor economy to the next level, we needed a laser-focused approach that would deliver real, tangible results, achieving both volumes and values. This is how, the City of Cape Town developed the Tourism Development Framework, designed to boost tourism, create jobs and attract investment, added James Vos.
The officials agreed that it is a great plan which fits on one hand, so there are five major key points to get things moving:
- More Flights – expanding the 31 destinations currently flying to Cape Town to increase access, attract more visitors and drive economic growth.
- More Cruise Liners – Motivating for the enhancement of port facilities to attract more ships and position Cape Town as a premier cruise destination.
- More Conferences – Securing global events to cement Cape Town as a leading business tourism hub.
- Facilitating Geographic Spread – Working with tourism stakeholders to promote a wider range of experiences, ensuring more communities benefit from visitor spending.
- Targeted Marketing – Driving destination awareness with high-impact campaigns.
Notably, each of these points works together and reinforced the bigger picture. If they want more visitors, they must make it easier for them to get here. “And that brings me to one of the most critical aspects of my advocacy work i.e. Open Skies,” explained James Vos.
Driving Open Skies was a Game-Changer move for Tourism and Investment. For too long, South Africa’s aviation sector was held back by outdated restrictions on flights. The Protectionists policies and bureaucratic red tape have made it harder and more expensive for airlines to operate, limiting competition, pushing up ticket prices and ultimately reducing the number of visitors that they welcomed.
Vos explained further that is why he has been a vocal advocate for an Open Skies policy and made direct submissions to national government to push for a more competitive and accessible air travel market.
The data spoke for itself and presented liberalizing air routes that could create 155,000 new jobs and contribute R24 billion to the GDP annually. As per Wesgro report released in 2022, for every 100 international air travellers, two local jobs were created. Cape Town International Airport exceeded its 2024 passenger targets by 125% and proved that the demand is there.
Vos also mentioned that they have already seen what happens when they open the door to more flights. Thanks to the Air Access initiative that Cape Town has added new direct routes to key markets by increasing passenger volumes and boosting local businesses.
According to MMC for Economic Growth they can’t stop there, if they want to compete globally, they need full-scale Open Skies reform to unlock the true potential of the tourism sector.