Cape Town jazz festival sets the stage for other local events
One of the world’s biggest jazz events is set to shake the Mother City this weekend. Locals from across the country and international visitors look forward to it every year.
Its scale hints at the capacity that events have to steer the tourism economy: the Cape Town International Jazz Festival contributes a whopping R700m to the economy, it is the Cape’s biggest annual event.
All tastes of jazz lovers will be catered for on five stages, by 40 artists, with a 50/50 split between local and international artists. It is expected that 37,000 music lovers will attend.
In the words of jazz great Herbie Hancock: “It’s not exclusive, but inclusive, which is the whole spirit of jazz.”
Other global cities – New Orleans, for example — thrive on the universal love of music and the accompanying celebration of life, creating vibrant experiences for tourists who love music.
And music is a central part of the tourist experience in Cape Town. There are year-round jazz tours and plenty of other music and cultural offerings.
International visitors love the wide range of musical styles represented in the city and it is one of the best ways to showcase SA’s multicultural offering.
It is also a means of building a career for local musicians, for whom the tourism rand goes a long way to providing them with the resources they need for studio time and promotion of their work.
In previous years, the Cape Town International Jazz Festival directly generated 2,700 jobs — besides the other effects it had on the economy.
Many international artists are now staging concerts in Johannesburg and Cape Town, with the cities enjoying the opportunities afforded by big stadiums. These concerts also encourage local tourism, as musical heroes are regarded as worth a weekend away, a road trip or a flight.
There are 103 festivals planned for Cape Town in 2017 — excluding market days, sports tournaments, family fun days, fairs, business meetings and conferences. This list is bound to grow before December.
These festivals are a catalyst for domestic tourism. The variety of events that have been planned and staged is astounding. In Cape Town, you could do something exciting every weekend of the year. That’s true of other big cities, with Johannesburg and Durban finding reasons to get locals exploring, while smaller towns have been getting in on the action.
The rise in popularity of active lifestyle activities has seen small towns cash in on events such as road and trail races and mountain biking competitions, so much so that all places of accommodation are fullybooked at the time those events are staged.
Each destination has its attractions. Cape Town has the Table Mountain Cableway, Robben Island Museum, Kirstenbosch, the City Walk, V&A Waterfront, Groot Constantia and Cape Point. There are also endless beaches and fantastic neighbourhood tours in Langa and Khayelitsha.
An entrepreneur can examine a neighbourhood and find a niche tourism activity that will provide employment opportunities and sustainable jobs in the longer term. This was done with the Mitchells Plain Festival and the Open Streets events – created by people who had a vision of promoting local tourism.
While it is harder to create a fixed attraction, an event can be started with relative ease, particularly when founded by a team with networking skills to develop collaborations.
From Welkom to Mthatha, people should be asking: “What can we do to attract more visitors and add value for locals?”
You take what exists and you improvise, create and market the offering. To adapt a quote from George Gershwin, who said “life is a lot like jazz ... it’s best when you improvise”, the same could be said of business, particularly in the tourism sector: improvisation is a skill that is essential when operating as a tourism entrepreneur.
Imagine, improvise, innovate and implement – from humble beginnings, your idea could be the next one to take a local event to a global market.