NO DAY ZERO FOR CAPE TOWN IN 2018 AND 2019
(Posted 30th June 2018)
Cape Town’s Deputy Mayor Ian Neilson earlier this week made a happy announcement – in particular for the hard hit tourism industry working overdrive to bring conference and leisure tourists into one of Africa’s most iconic cities – that there will be no #DayZero either in 2018 or in 2019.
That said will water use restrictions remain in place but hotels in the city have learned to cope with that very well as this correspondent was able to establish during his two visits to Cape Town this year.
https://atcnews.org/2018/06/18/capetowns-dilemma-visitors-versus-water/
Dam levels have risen to nearly 43 percent, aided by good rainfall, something the city and province have been missing for too long. Said Deputy Mayor Ian Neilson: ‘Provided that adequate water restrictions are maintained, the City is confident that there will be no prospect of reaching Day Zero in 2019. This is due to the amount of water already in the dams, our intense water demand management programmes, our unrelenting communication, awareness and behavioural change it has affected over the past two years, as well as the continued support and sacrifice of Team Cape Town. While we hope to reduce the current water restrictions in the near future, and the tariffs associated with them, this decision is dependent on national government relaxing restrictions on releases from the water supply system‘.
With this challenge reduced can the Cape Town Convention Bureau and South African Tourism now go flat out again to promote visits to Cape Town and mitigate the impact a water saving campaign meant for locals but gone global has generated, reducing visitor numbers over the past year.
Regardless of these challenges however has Cape Town remained the top African Conference City according to the ICCA data released a month ago.
