South Africa: Western Cape Gets R1.2bn Boost From Cruise Industry, With 1,800 Jobs and Even More Growth On Horizon

5 October 2023
Daily Maverick (Johannesburg)
By Marianne Merten

The docking of cruise ship Vasco da Gama in Cape Town is not a re-enactment of the Portuguese colonialist's 1497 arrival, but the opening of the cruise liner tourism season on 2 November.

A total of 49 ship visits and 30 turnaround port calls are expected until May 2024, with 22 world cruises. While this is lower than the 70 visits from November 2022 to May 2023 - the first full season since the Covid-19 lockdowns - the number of world cruises, crucially, is up from 17 to 22, according to Cruise Cape Town.

And reflecting Cape Town's cruise industry growth potential, overall the numbers generally are up from the pre-Covid period - between 2016 and 2019, 30 to 40 cruise liners called on Cape Town port.

International visitors, who embark and disembark in Cape Town on turnaround trips, and those on world tours that stop over in Cape Town, are key to jobs and the provincial and national gross domestic product (GDP), according to a study commissioned by Wesgro, the Western Cape economic development agency that runs Cruise Cape Town in a private-public partnership with the provincial and local governments, the V&A Waterfront, the South African Maritime Safety Authority and Transnet.

For the 2022/23 cruise season that GDP contribution totalled R1.23-billion to the Western Cape. Just under half (48%) came from international visitors, 42% from vessels and 9% from domestic cruise passengers....

Read the full story on Daily Maverick.

Tagged:
Copyright © 2023 Daily Maverick. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.

AllAfrica publishes around 500 reports a day from more than 100 news organizations and over 500 other institutions and individuals, representing a diversity of positions on every topic. We publish news and views ranging from vigorous opponents of governments to government publications and spokespersons. Publishers named above each report are responsible for their own content, which AllAfrica does not have the legal right to edit or correct.

Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica. To address comments or complaints, please Contact us.