Chris van Gass

Cape Correspondent

CAPE TOWN — The Cape Town International Convention Centre has had to turn away business for 2010 because of a delay in finalising aspects of its expansion on to the nearby Customs House site, which is owned by the public works department, says MD Dirk Elzinga.

But he said work would start soon. Though he could not confirm a date for the demolition of the existing building, he hoped this would happen “in the next few months”.

With lead times for arranging conferences varying from two to four years, the centre could not promise clients fixed dates in 2010 and therefore had to turn away “a few interesting international conferences”, Elzinga said.

One such conference was lost to Athens, and the centre had persuaded another to use the convention centre in Durban, Elzinga said.

He said certain peak periods next year and in 2009 were already fully booked and that expansion was imperative.

The convention centre, which hosts a third of SA’s conferences and two thirds of international conferences held in SA, contributed about R2,4bn to SA’s GDP in the past financial year. It achieved record results in the year to June 30, with a turnover of more than R100m.

Elzinga said in the first six months of this financial year indications were that the centre would achieve similar “or even better” financial results.

Elzinga said the figures were proof the Cape Town venue was the best-contributing convention centre in the country.

However, it had not taken away any market share from Durban’s and Sandton’s convention centres, SA’s other two main meeting venues, he said.

Elzinga said an “interesting” development for the Cape Town facility — and unrelated to its core business of conferences, exhibitions and trade fairs — was that it was used 77 times for film and photographic shoots.

“We did not want these activities initially as it was not part of our core business, but we relented to pressure from the film commission and individual producers who found the venue attractive for such activities,” Elzinga said.

He said that as a result of the convention centre’s activities, 3796 people were employed directly in Western Cape and more than 5500 were employed indirectly elsewhere in the country.

Elzinga highlighted the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) conference, which brought 1300 newspaper editors and publishers to Cape Town as one of the conferences that had boosted the image of the city and SA through the publicity generated internationally.

Other conferences that attracted much publicity in the past year included the World Economic Forum on Africa (400 delegates), the International Union against Tuberculosis(1000 delegates) and the largest conference yet held there, the World Diabetes Congress, with 12300 international delegates.