Western Cape Business 2019 edition

INTERVIEW
Showcasing investment
opportunities
Wesgro CEO Tim Harris outlines how dedicated programmes
are attracting significant investments and tourists.
Tim Harris, CEO
BIOGRAPHY
Tim Harris is the CEO of
Wesgro, the Tourism, Trade and
Investment Promotion Agency
for Cape Town and the Western
Cape. Tim previously served
as Member of Parliament and
Shadow Minister of Finance
for the Democratic Alliance
(DA). He holds a BA in English
Literature and a Masters in
Economics from the University
of Cape Town. Tim currently sits
on the board of the Cape Town
Film Studios and BPESA.
The Western Cape metropole emerged from a long-term
drought as a more resilient city. What has been the impact
on tourism and investment?
There are many factors that affect tourism and investment. From a tourism
perspective factors include affordability, distance to destination, climate,
exchange rate, visa regulations and even the price of petrol will have a
big impact on the domestic market. Similarly, investment was negatively
impacted through credit downgrades, policy uncertainty, political
instability and negative media coverage surrounding the drought that
weighed down on our investment case globally.
The effect of the drought on tourism will not be seen at this point;
however, our top 10 markets (UK, Germany, USA, Namibia, France,
Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Australia and the UAE) performed
relatively well in Q1 of this financial year despite the circumstances.
We did indeed look to other markets for lessons learnt, inspiration
and advice on how to deal with a crisis. Tourism is a resilient sector, and
with time it can correct itself. We learnt from Mexico that profit margins
for businesses, especially small business, is so small that anything and
everything must be done to expedite recovery. Another lesson learnt
was that deep discounting was not a solution either. Egypt learnt that it
takes five years to mathematically recover from a 10% cut in prices – once
you start discounting your clients change and so does your competition,
which isn’t always good.
Taking inspiration from the “Great” Britain destination marketing
campaign we conducted research through an international investor
perceptions survey, to provide insight as to how Cape Town and the
rest of South Africa faired in the international investment consideration
market. Following this, a marketing campaign was devised to instil
confidence in the economy of the Cape and South Africa internationally,
by showcasing the many opportunities for investment across a variety
of sectors in the Western Cape.
The research provided us with the data we needed to make sure
the campaign was efficient and impactful. It demonstrated that we
needed to do more to show to the world our relative strengths – access
to growing markets, ease of doing business, a growing economy, and
world-class infrastructure were key points identified in this research.
WESTERN CAPE BUSINESS 2019
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