Wesgro Tourism

The tourism team offers a wide variety of services to the tourism industry and media, such as hosting workshops. We also coordinate dynamic and interesting joint marketing campaigns to promote the province and its towns with domestic and international partners.

Our events team assists with funding and media coverage for local events, and we provide a wide variety marketing tool kits in a variety of languages. The convention bureau unit offers a very specific range of services to promote and expand the Cape’s meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions industry. 

EVENT SPONSORSHIP

Overview:

Wesgro, is the official tourism, trade and investment promotion agency for Cape Town and the Western Cape. As the provincial tourism promotional agency, our role is position and promote the province as the preferred business and leisure events destination for both the domestic and international audience.

Why do we support a range of business and leisure events?

Wesgro supports a diverse range of business, gastronomy, sport and cultural events across the Cape. Events are an important economic driver and job contributor to the Western Cape. In 2015, total spend (excluding capital expenditure) from tourists in the Western Cape equated to R14.9bn, a percentage of this as a result of spend by visitors to our wide range of events. Events give visitors a time-critical reason to visit the Western Cape and encourage visitors to travel outside the city and into our five diverse regions.

PARTNERSHIP OBJECTIVES

Wesgro aims to increase the profile of the destination through the leveraging of events that:

• Position the destination as international and domestic events destination.
• Attract international and domestic visitors.
• Help increase geographic spread
• Enhance and align with strategic niche activities as defined in Project Khulisa (cycling, wine & food, culture & heritage)

Wesgro will consider sponsoring events and festivals that meet the following criteria:

1. Combat seasonality – the event must take place between April – September
2. Job creation – event must have a potential to contribute towards job creation
3. Audited financials – event organiser must be willing to submit audited financials.
4. Event marketing plan – vision/mission, target markets, marketing and pr budget information.
5. Media plans – expected print, radio, online and TV coverage, secured media partnerships
6. Endorsement letter – must have a letter from the regional or local tourism organisation

BUSINESS EVENTS

How and when can I apply?

Convention Bureau: For meeting, incentives, conference, congress and exhibition support. Please contact our Convention Bureau. There is no time frame for bid application support with the Convention Bureau and each application is reviewed upon receipt.

Convention Bureau services and support: The Convention Bureau, which is a strategic division within Wesgro offers a wide range of support. These includes:

• Pre and post bid assistance
• Convention planning support
• On-site event services

LEISURE EVENTS

Funding and support:

We are frequently approached by event organisers with the request for funding. We do a yearly call for applications from January – February each year. Following a formal proposal submission, we assess each event to determine whether it fits our funding criteria, our strategy and budget. All event organisers will receive feedback by the end of March.

We offer the following support:

• Financial support
  • Financial support (up to R50 000 incl VAT)
  • Media hosting support (up to R50 000 incl VAT)
  • Influencer hosting support (up to R50 000 incl VAT)
  • Tourism trade hosting support (up to R50 000 incl VAT)

•  Non-financial support
  • Website listing here
  • Social media support via our platforms on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook
  • Inclusion in our trade calendar which is shared via the following platforms: