Cape Town has been named second-best city in the world and best city in Africa by readers of US-based travel resource Condé Nast Traveller.
The 25th annual Readers’ Choice awards were recently announced by Condé Nast, after close to 50 000 readers took part in the survey.
Cape Town scored 84.8, and was only beaten by the popular southern US city of Charleston. The other cities in the top 10 included Florence, Bangkok, Vancouver, Sydney, Beirut, St Miguel de Allende, Buenos Aires and Gustavia.
Readers scored Cape Town 92.3 for ambience, 89.3 for lodging, 86.7 for culture and sites, 86.6 for friendliness, 86.0 for restaurants and 69.2 for shopping.
Meanwhile, Cape Town topped the list in Africa, followed by Knysna and Marrakech in Morocco.
Cape Town Tourism CEO, Mariëtte du Toit-Helmbold, said: “The quality of our tourism industry offerings and the intuitive staff within the sector is ultimately what makes these awards possible. If travellers weren’t going home happy they wouldn’t be voting for Cape Town. We commend the industry and the people that work so hard to help make visitors’ Cape Town experience so memorable.”
Last year, Cape Town was named top city in Africa and the Middle East in the survey.
Cape Town has also received numerous other accolades, including Best Destination in Africa at the World Travel Awards 2011; Best Destination in the World at the TripAdvisor Traveller’s Choice Awards 2011; The World’s Top City in Africa and the Middle East at the Travel + Leisure World’s Best Awards 2012; Fourth Top City in the World, Travel + Leisure World’s Best Awards 2012; 23rd: Top 25 Destinations in the World, TripAdvisor Travelers’ Choice Awards 2012; 8th: Top 10 Beach Destinations in Africa, TripAdvisor Travelers’ Choice Awards 2012; Best Beach Destination in Africa, World Travel Awards 2012; and One of the World’s Ten Most Loved Cities 2012, CNNgo.
Table Mountain was also named a New7Wonder of Nature, and Cape Town was named World Design Capital 2014.
Executive Mayor, Alderman Patricia de Lille, recently spoke at the Cape Town Tourism AGM, detailing how the city is looking at non-traditional tourism markets, such as the Asian, African and Pacific regions.
She said the tourism sector remains a vitally important contributor to economic growth, development and inclusion in Cape Town and the rest of the country, with estimations that by 2020, the contribution of tourism to the national economy will be R499 million and that this growth will result in 225 000 new jobs being created.
“The challenge for Cape Town, both as a City administration and for our service providers, is to ensure that we constantly innovate and refresh our offering to the market, in order to capitalise on this growth. This is especially true due to the current climate of a global economic slowdown which is putting a strain on our traditional markets in Europe and North America.
“But apart from exploring non-traditional markets, we must also ensure that we broaden the value proposition of Cape Town as a destination. We do so by emphasising that we are not only a leisure destination, but also a business, events and academic destination of choice.”
