City prepares for Brazil travel campaign ahead of first direct flight between São Paulo and Cape Town

The Mayoral Committee Member for Economic Growth, Alderman James Vos announces plans for the City to roll out a major digital travel campaign in Brazil to build momentum ahead of the launch of the first direct flight between São Paulo and Cape Town. Read more below:

According to Alderman Vos the campaign’s activation in the South American country follows its massive success in the US market where it saw more than 23 million impressions, surpassing campaign reach and impressions targets by over 500%.

Prior to that, the campaign ran in European cities including London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Lisbon, Zurich and Berlin, where it received more than 25 million views, exceeding its target by 3 million views.

‘This is one of the measures we use to push demand from key source markets that leads to increased bookings. Between January and April 2023, we saw inbound travel from these markets surpass figures seen for the same period in 2019. UK air passengers recovered to 104% of the January to April 2019 numbers, Germany hit 106%, the Netherlands recovered to 116%, and the USA reached by an incredible 155%. Our aim with taking this campaign to Brazil is to encourage such positive sentiment that converts to bookings,’ said Alderman Vos.

The campaign preparation comes after the announcement of upcoming direct South African Airways (SAA) flights between Cape Town and São Paulo, starting from 31 October 2023.

‘In April, Cape Town Tourism CEO, Enver Duminy and I met with various airline executives, tourism bodies and investment agencies in Brazil to present Cape Town’s unique value proposition and destination offer, and made a case for a direct flight that will allow for easy access to and from this important source market. Our Air Access team in Wesgro has been engaging with aviation stakeholders over a long period to prepare the route. Brazil is South Africa’s biggest trading partner in Latin America and in terms of tourism. With this new direct flight we will firm up relations between our two regions, boost trade, and bring more South American tourists to Cape Town that will benefit our city’s economy and work towards our goal to create a tourism-related job in every household.

‘Now that this route is ready to take off, we will get to work keeping it in the skies and driving increased destination marketing to attract more South American travellers to our shores. It gives me great pleasure to see this flight confirmed and my team and I will keep working to establish further connectivity between these and other source markets and Cape Town,’ said Alderman Vos.