The province's leisure tourism market alone saw over 1.5 million foreign visitors in 2003 and 5.1 million domestic trips. Cape Town has also just won the title of 'Best Foreign City' in the 2004 UK Telegraph Travel Awards.
Destination Marketing CEO, Noki Dube, said that the new brand had taken a significant amount of time, expertise and financial resources to research and develop.
He said that Cape Town and the Western Cape are the country's strongest tourism attractors, with six of the top 10 tourist destinations situated here. "How we present ourselves to the world in order to grow the tourism base is critical. To date, the region and the city have been marketed by a number of different tourism agencies, lacking in a consistent brand identity, a consolidated message, and with fractured marketing strategies and mixed objectives.
"The creation of the DMO was, in the first instance, designed to address costly duplications in tourism marketing, and at the same time, create a unified brand that everyone - particularly the private sector - could use. On their own, these marketing strategies were very good; together, they are that much stronger.
"Exhaustive testing has shown us that this new brand identity, used across all aspects of marketing our destination, will work effectively at building a sustainable awareness of the city and the Western Cape across all spheres of our tourism market. South Africa's best recognised tourism icon and the gateway to the province, Table Mountain, will be used extensively. Recognising that our region is all about diverse experiences, these will be aggressively promoted throughout. This is all about growing the market, not simply redistributing it throughout the region.
"The new brand had to work not only for the different tourism segments - leisure, business and events tourism, but also for the different regions. That means we work closely with all local tourism bureaux, associations and the private sector to leverage the new umbrella brand while not losing the strength and differentiation of regional sub-brands.
"To expand and manage the brand's use by all tourism players in the province, we have developed guidelines that detail usage procedures and how it should be used to market the destination and its assets to best effect. This will be communicated to the industry over the next few weeks, detailing how individual organisations can apply the brand to support their own initiatives and efforts.
"While we remain custodians of this brand, it is those at the coalface who are the drivers of tourism and the ones who will benefit most from its use."
Looking ahead, Dube said that the major deliverables for Cape Town Routes Unlimited included positioning Cape Town as a key shopping tourism destination, ongoing work with the airlines to increase capacity and frequency, exposure of emerging players to international markets and completing the rebranding and consolidation of Visitor Information Services Centres.
The launch event was used as an opportunity to showcase the Western Cape's total product offering, including a new venue in Khayelitsha, traditional Cape seafood, local arts and crafts, the Hermanus Whale crier, Cape jazz and hosts Shado Twala and Clarence Ford. Food experts, the Cook-up Kamammas, represented the various regions of the Western Cape Province. Members of this empowerment group either run a home or community restaurant or offer their cuisine as part of a cultural experience in their community.
