Cape Town turns crisis into opportunity
By David Cogswell
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“The main contribution to us getting through the drought was a change in attitude toward consumption of water and how we could get by with less water as citizens,” said [Tim Harris, CEO of Wesgro, the official tourism, trade and investment promotion agency for Cape Town and the Western Cape] . “You saw this incredible change in attitude and a real massive reduction in wastefulness. Most Capetonians now have a totally different relationship with water. They think about it differently.”
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“When Day Zero was created, it gave the impression that Cape Town is not a place to go,” said Harris. Through Wesgro, a large group of stakeholders in the business and tourism sectors went to work to change the messaging.
“The first call we made was to Visit California,” said Harris, “because we knew they had been through a really bad drought, and we wanted to understand what a DMO could do to help to get through it. The advice they gave was, ‘You need to take responsibility for coordinating a message between government and business that you are open for tourism, notwithstanding what you are reading in the papers.’”
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Cape Town’s success in overcoming its water shortage crisis was a positive story, a story about how change by individuals could solve a huge problem. Unfortunately, said Harris, “avoiding a drought was less newsworthy than a drought.”
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