Cape Town boasts a spiffy new cruise liner terminal
More tourists arrive in city by ocean liner
THE cruise line industry offers enormous potential for tourism growth in Cape Town, and the recently completed Cape Town Cruise Terminal is boosting growth by attracting more tourists, with more than 80 000 arrivals over the past year.
This is according to David Green, chief executive at the V&A Waterfront, who said the cruise ship industry was an important part of Cape Town’s ocean economy and the city’s proud marine heritage.
Green hosted journalists yesterday at the newly completed terminal with the massive, 294m Queen Elizabeth, which arrived in Cape Town on Monday and departed yesterday
“As beautiful as Cape Town is, if a passenger’s experience on arrival is unpleasant, it can affect their entire perception of the city. From international experience we know that the cruise line industry offers enormous potential for tourism growth, so we were determined to extend the worldclass experience the V&A Waterfront is known for to the cruise terminal,” he said.
Green said Transnet National Ports Authority appointed the V&A Waterfront in 2015 as the preferred bidder to manage the newly constructed cruise terminal.
He said phase one of the project was completed for the start of the cruise ship season in 2016 and last year work commenced on phase two of the upper level, with lifts, staircases, a mix of space for events, restaurants and various related tenants, while the ample parking area catered for transport operators and locals collecting visitors.
The terminal development was completed this month with the development of Cape Town’s flagship seafood restaurant, Panama Jacks, the “original Cape Town Harbour best seafood restaurant since 1989”. Green said the cruise ship industry was seasonal, running from October to May, and the majority of ships arriving at Cape Town carried under 1 000 passengers, but varied between 200 and 3 000.
He said the terminal in its first season (2015/2016) received a total of 44 vessels and processed 86 400 people including 37 655 crew members.
During the 2016/2017 season, the terminal received a visit from the Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mary 2, the biggest cruise liner in the world at 365m.
Green said in the current season (2017/2018) the terminal processed a total of 80 074 arrivals of which 64 915 were passengers and 15 159 were crew.
“This new collaboration will market Cape Town to the lucrative cruise liner industry on the doorstep of the V&A Waterfront, with its world-class shops, restaurants, hotels and diverse entertainment options. But one of the primary reasons for the success of the V&A is that it has always been a mixed-use district where retail, commercial and residential developments have been integrated into what is still a working harbour.
“We are determined that future residential opportunities should accommodate middle-income households, thus enhancing our hard-earned reputation as a socially and economically mixed district of greater Cape Town, he said.
Green said the Waterfront experience showed that bold, self-confident and consistent investment in infrastructure unlocked a virtuous cycle of employment-creation, and the enhanced production of goods and services augmented taxes for all spheres of government and growth in local economies.
“At a time when unemployment is arguably the most urgent challenge facing the country, our deliberate focus on fostering small business has increased the total number of direct jobs created from 12 958 in 2008 to 21 790 in 2016. Over the same period, indirect jobs created in the Western Cape grew by over 80% to 17 516.”
He said in recent years, small-scale crafters and other SMMEs had become an increasingly important element of the Waterfront’s retail and tenant mix.
“If the Waterfront has demonstrated one lesson, it is that public-private partnerships are the only guaranteed way of achieving the complex objectives of urban renewal, infrastructure provision and project management. What we have achieved would simply not have been possible had any of the collaborating partners sought to go it alone.”