The City of Cape Town has announced that the first quarter of 2023 has seen a rapid increase in local and international events held since the pandemic.
In a statement released by CoCT, it said the Mother City had recorded 500 000 people had attended events in Cape Town in the last three months.
Cape Town’s Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security; Alderman JP Smith said: “This year has shown that our local events industry is steadily recovering from the impact of Covid-19 and it is contributing to stabilising the economy.
“If you look at the latest Stats SA Labour Report, more than 70% of net jobs created were in tourism in the Cape which is an offshoot of the local events industry being able to attract participants and spectators to events in Cape Town.
“The importance of events is shown in these results and as the City, we remain committed to our ongoing support of events and providing an enabling environment for them to thrive. This will ensure they continue contributing to the economy, creating job opportunities and promoting Cape Town to international audiences who choose the city as their next holiday destination.”
The City of Cape Town’s Events Permit Office has already issued 327 event permits between January and March – the highest for that period since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The City, through its events application process, supported at least 50 of these events financially or with municipal services.
The year kicked off with the celebration of culture, tradition and music at the return of the popular “Tweede Nuwe Jaar Street Parade” which included thousands of performers and more than 80 000 spectators.
According to the statement: “The event created over 2 000 jobs while also providing trading opportunities for local small businesses”
It said that February and March have proved to be the busiest months of the financial year for events with 118 and 128 respectively.
This includes “Formula E”, “T20 Women’s World Cup”, “Cape Town Ladies Open”, “SA Women’s Open”, “International Ice Hockey Federation Women’s Championship”, “The Ocean Race”, “Wynberg Family Festival”, “Spar Cape Town Ramadaan and Lifestyle Expo”, “Cape Town Pride”, “Cape Town Cycle Tour” and the “Cape Town Carnival”.
“These two months had over 417 000 attendees, created over 11 000 jobs and provided thousands of trading opportunities for small to medium enterprises.
“The economic impact of those events alone is estimated at more than R2 billion.” Smith said.
The City’s Events Department is gearing up to provide support to a variety of events in the last quarter of the 2022/23 financial year, including the “Comic Con Cape Town”, “Senior Men’s Ice Hockey World Champions”, “Jive Cape Town Funny Festival”, “Suidoosterfees” and the “Absa Run Your City Cape Town 10km race”.