Gauteng Investment Centre opens in Sandton

Gauteng Tourism as one of the provincial department of Economic Development agencies welcomes this great initiative and believes that, this one-stop-shop support center for investors and business will go a long way in assisting our efforts to become a truly competitive global city destination and a preferred business tourism hub.

"For us in the tourism sector, the opening of this centre will enable us in packaging our business tourism offerings by adding another world-class meetings and business intelligence facility into our already prestigious list of arsenals. The centre opened right in time for Africa's biggest Business Tourism Lekgotla called Meetings Africa which is taking place a few meters from this state of the art center from next week," explain Dawn Robertson, chief executive officer of Gauteng Tourism.

Economic and business hub of SA

Gauteng is the economic and business hub of South Africa with good international connectivity and contributes over a third of SA's GDP with significant contributions from the tertiary sectors (finance, business services etc). This and many other factors makes our region a palatable destination for business tourism as there is a direct link between business activities, access to decision makers and the required infrastructure in making a call on where to host your big conference, event and exhibition or making your investment and business location decisions.

With a strong tertiary sector, cosmopolitan population, large concentration of meetings and events venues, presence of world renowned academic research institutions and strong research industry and being the seat of government with world-class infrastructure we are in pole position to leverage over 250,000 business travelers that visits South Africa per year.

Through our Gauteng Convention and Events Bureau, a provincial bidding, hosting and events machinery that focuses on attracting big conference, conventions, and events into the city region and leveraging the expected economic benefits, we will be working very closely with the GIC to ensure that it's services are part of our promotion and marketing efforts in selling Gauteng as a preferred destination for investments, film, business and tourism.

Pillars for economic growth and development

Tourism is recognised in the New Growth Path as one of the 6 pillars for economic growth and development due to its labour intensity character and other socio economic benefits. In his state of the nation address, President Zuma acknowledge the significant increases of over 17% growth in tourist arrival figures over the past 19 years and correctly labelled tourism the new gold.

The sector contributes 4% of the total provincial workforce and over 4% contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by Region and 9% overall nationally highlighting its importance to the economy of Gauteng and the country. In hard numbers we are talking in excess of over 500 000 people employed by the sector, contributing in the region of R30 billion per annum to the provincial economy with more than half of these figures are attributed to business tourism contribution.

While business tourism accounts for between 5 - 15% of total foreign tourist's arrivals to South Africa, research shows that business travelers spend much more than leisure tourists and the coordination of activities between Gauteng Tourism and the Gauteng Investment Center under the Gauteng Growth & Development Agency (GGDA) will go a long way in harnessing this strong position.