Cape Town sets its sights on China

Cape Town is intensifying its push into China’s outbound tourism market, as the city seeks to capture a greater share of high-spending travellers.

According to recent data from the UN’s World Tourism Organisation, Chinese travellers were the biggest outbound spending category by country in 2024.

They spent approximately $250 billion (R4.33 trillion), far ahead of second-ranked United States foreign travellers, who collectively spent about $177.8 billion (R3.08 trillion).

Speaking after a trade mission in Shanghai, Mayoral Committee Member for Economic Growth Alderman James Vos noted the value of tapping into this market.

According to Vos, boosting Cape Town’s profile in China’s outbound travel market would be a game changer for the city’s tourism industry and broader economy.

The trade mission was facilitated by Wesgro and included meetings with South African Tourism, potential investors, and attendance at the Shanghai Global Food Trade Show.

“Cape Town is an incredible city with a wide variety of attractions and experiences for travellers of all interests and backgrounds,” Vos said.

“However, last year, the whole of South Africa saw only 41,651 Chinese tourists come to our shores, a fraction of the approximately 100 million outbound Chinese tourists in 2024.”

For this reason, Vos said he is encouraged to see that Cape Town’s destination campaign ads received over 20 million impressions in just one year.

These ads were essentially tested with a minimal budget on WeChat, China’s dominant instant messaging and social media app, from September 2024 to October 2025.

“The next marketing stage will build on this foundation and move from a single platform to a broader digital presence,” he said.

“We will now move to expand our reach to other major social platforms in China, where we will leverage our growing library of Chinese-language content, including articles, brochures, and destination videos.”

Vos explained that this is in line with a survey by marketing experts, China Trading Desk, who found that Chinese outbound travellers are tech-savvy.

They also revealed that Chinese travellers are reliant on social media platforms for inspiration, trustworthy tips, and guidance on finding destinations that are immersive, authentic and celebrate local communities.

Visa changes lures travellers to Cape Town

Cape Town is also set to launch another social media campaign in India. This comes after destination ads for the city, which ran between February and July 2025, resulted in 130 million impressions and a reach of 68 million in the country.

This was accompanied by an Out of Home digital billboard initiative in prominent high-traffic business and leisure areas of Mumbai.

“With the Trusted Tour Operator Scheme (TTOS) implemented by the Home Affairs Department, regions such as Cape Town stand to gain masses of first-time and repeat travellers,” Vos said.

Launched in February 2025, the TTOS replaced manual, inefficient and paper-based processes that required prospective tourists to travel long distances just to apply for a visa with a new online system.

The old system often took weeks to process and required a return trip for collection, but under the new system, tour operators upload applications online and get digital outcomes, on average, within 24 hours.

From February to early August 2025, the TTOS successfully attracted an additional 25,024 tourists from India and China, where it was initially launched, who would have otherwise been deterred by visa delays.

Cape Town expects to welcome even more visitors from countries such as China and India because of the TTOS. “Forecasts predict that outbound travel from the two countries will hit a combined 240 million people by 2028,” Vos said.

This would significantly boost Cape Town’s economy and local job market. In 2024, domestic and international visitors directly supported over 106,000 jobs.

“If Cape Town could take a bigger chunk out of these countries’ tourism markets, we could potentially sustain thousands more Capetonians. We are working hard to make this real.”