Prolonged Water Crisis in Cape Town hitting tourism hard

Saturday, February 3, 2018

South Africa’s one of the busiest city Cape Town is suffering from severe water crisis and within the week the tourism is hitting hard as the visitors’ numbers are declining.

With experts predicting Cape Town will run out of water in mid-April, the residents of Cape Town have been told to limit usage to 50 liters per person per day. An average bath holds 80 liters of water.

The hotels have asked guests not to use baths and to limit showers to two minutes or less, while some restaurants are switching to disposable cups and ditching table linen.

There are more than 10 million tourists visited Cape Town last year. Cape Town is popular for its Table Mountain and its long sandy beaches and grasp of nearby wine farms.

The tourism in Cape Town accounted for an estimated 9 percent of South Africa’s economic output last year, or 412 billion rand ($35 billion). Though visitors are sympathetic to Cape Town’s plight, there are fears that people may stay away due to the problem of water restrictions or because they don’t want to add to demand. There is no official data available yet to quantify the impact water shortages are having on numbers. The Global Sourcing Association, a large London-based non-profit, said that it was postponing a major March conference in Cape Town to later in the year when it hopes the drought situation will be alleviated.

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