Johannesburg can look forward to accelerated business and leisure tourism in 2006 and beyond, according to Eddy Khosa, CEO of The Johannesburg Tourism Company (JTC), which is spearheading the drive for growth in both international and domestic tourism to the city.
“We have recently been given a mandate by the Johannesburg City Council to add leisure tourism to our commitment to boosting business tourism to destination Johannesburg,” Khosa said in a statement on Friday.
“We are putting into place a dynamic new marketing strategy this year.”
The JTC is run by a private sector board with financial support from the city council.
Khosa says that his management will be reaching out to a greater extent to local communities this year through the support of eight regional tourism associations that are driven by local business.
“In Soweto, for example, we will be officially opening the Soweto Tourism Information Centre that will be tasked with further building tourism in Soweto, which is already the South African township most visited by foreign tourists,” said Khosa. “Our marketing plans will also be targeting domestic-tourism growth in Soweto.”
These plans, he says, include aggressively selling and raising the occupancy rate of bed-and-breakfast and related tourist sectors in Soweto, Alexandra and other townships. In addition, the Park Station Tourism Information Centre is to be opened soon.
“Central to the marketing strategy is the inner city, which has undergone dramatic rejuvenation in the past ten years and is attracting increasing numbers of business and leisure tourists, both foreign and local,” the statement said.
Khosa has been appointed by the Minister of Tourism for a three-year period to represent the business-tourism industry on the Black Economic Empowerment Charter Council and also sits on the boards of the bodies that act as the voice of the meeting and conference industries. — I-Net Bridge