eThekwini mayor Mxolisi Kaunda has promised the city’s beaches will be ready for this year’s festive season.
The municipality said on Friday after another round of water testing it has closed Brighton, Ansteys, Point, Ushaka, Addington, South, Wedge, North, Bay of Plenty, Battery, Country Club eThekwini, Laguna, Baggies and Reunion beaches. Umhlanga main, Umdloti, Westbrook and Bronze beaches are also closed.
Beaches that remain open include Toti, Pipeline, Warner, Winklespruit and Umgababa, said spokesperson Msawakhe Mayisela, adding that the municipality continues to test water quality at beaches regularly and takes decisions based on those results.
Kaunda was speaking at the launch of Durban Tourism's 2022 summer campaign, the Durban Travel Extravaganza, at the Octavia Boutique hotel in Inanda, north of Durban.
After a difficult two years for the sector, owing to Covid-19, the July 2021 unrest and the April floods, Durban Tourism said it would be looking to empower other role players in the industry.
“We want to foster relationships with established businesses in the city and grow together in bringing people to Durban. This will be our first summer since 2019 I [with] the regulations removed so we are going to have a total experience. As we approach summer we are hoping not to have either a natural disaster or a disaster in [any other] form and have less beach closures,” said eThekwini deputy city manager Philip Sithole.
Sithole said the campaign will be a collaborative effort with stakeholders locally and nationally.
“We will be working together. We will be doing this summer campaign with various stakeholders like community tourism organisations, departments within the city and nationally, including people from the creative industry. The city will continue to work and support both emerging and well-established tourism products to promote tourism in Durban,” he said.
He added the approach to promoting Durban as an ideal destination will be aggressive.
“It will be promoted using various platforms: TV, radio stations, activations and various venues — some owned by council. Others will be partnerships because they own certain products so we have to work together. It will also be through our museums, properties like Octavia and many others,” he said.
The real elephant in the room, though, is the closure of beaches. As a city that markets itself by its great weather and warm beaches, beach closures present a considerable challenge to “the warmest place to be”.
“We can’t be sure that the beaches will be open for two days or a week, so there are no guarantees what will happen. That forces us to market Durban by outlining the entire experience, over and above the beach, but our uniqueness relies on [our being] a coastal city, so without the beach we have a big challenge,” said Sithole.
However, Kaunda set out to allay these fears, saying the city was on track to open the beaches before the festive season.
“Our teams are hard at work regularly testing water to ascertain the level of the bacteria... [we have fixed] our infrastructure but we need time to ensure we conduct thorough assessments [before] we can open some of the beaches,” he said.
“It's important we take care of environmental requirements before we open our beaches, but you can rest assured we are going to open them..”
He told TimesLIVE that ageing infrastructure was another challenge and being replaced.
“We don’t have any more challenges but we will see an increased number of tourists this festive season... that is [borne out] by the big events we have hosted in the City after the lifting of Covid-19 regulations, like the Hollywoodbets Durban July,” he said.
“It shows the resilience of the city and the systems put in place to try to recover from the losses we incurred during the pandemic floods. It means the city is on the right track, so we expect more people.”
TimesLIVE
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eThekwini ‘on track for a bumper festive season’ in spite of challenges
Image: Mlungisi Mbele
eThekwini mayor Mxolisi Kaunda has promised the city’s beaches will be ready for this year’s festive season.
The municipality said on Friday after another round of water testing it has closed Brighton, Ansteys, Point, Ushaka, Addington, South, Wedge, North, Bay of Plenty, Battery, Country Club eThekwini, Laguna, Baggies and Reunion beaches. Umhlanga main, Umdloti, Westbrook and Bronze beaches are also closed.
Beaches that remain open include Toti, Pipeline, Warner, Winklespruit and Umgababa, said spokesperson Msawakhe Mayisela, adding that the municipality continues to test water quality at beaches regularly and takes decisions based on those results.
Kaunda was speaking at the launch of Durban Tourism's 2022 summer campaign, the Durban Travel Extravaganza, at the Octavia Boutique hotel in Inanda, north of Durban.
After a difficult two years for the sector, owing to Covid-19, the July 2021 unrest and the April floods, Durban Tourism said it would be looking to empower other role players in the industry.
“We want to foster relationships with established businesses in the city and grow together in bringing people to Durban. This will be our first summer since 2019 I [with] the regulations removed so we are going to have a total experience. As we approach summer we are hoping not to have either a natural disaster or a disaster in [any other] form and have less beach closures,” said eThekwini deputy city manager Philip Sithole.
Sithole said the campaign will be a collaborative effort with stakeholders locally and nationally.
“We will be working together. We will be doing this summer campaign with various stakeholders like community tourism organisations, departments within the city and nationally, including people from the creative industry. The city will continue to work and support both emerging and well-established tourism products to promote tourism in Durban,” he said.
He added the approach to promoting Durban as an ideal destination will be aggressive.
“It will be promoted using various platforms: TV, radio stations, activations and various venues — some owned by council. Others will be partnerships because they own certain products so we have to work together. It will also be through our museums, properties like Octavia and many others,” he said.
The real elephant in the room, though, is the closure of beaches. As a city that markets itself by its great weather and warm beaches, beach closures present a considerable challenge to “the warmest place to be”.
“We can’t be sure that the beaches will be open for two days or a week, so there are no guarantees what will happen. That forces us to market Durban by outlining the entire experience, over and above the beach, but our uniqueness relies on [our being] a coastal city, so without the beach we have a big challenge,” said Sithole.
However, Kaunda set out to allay these fears, saying the city was on track to open the beaches before the festive season.
“Our teams are hard at work regularly testing water to ascertain the level of the bacteria... [we have fixed] our infrastructure but we need time to ensure we conduct thorough assessments [before] we can open some of the beaches,” he said.
“It's important we take care of environmental requirements before we open our beaches, but you can rest assured we are going to open them..”
He told TimesLIVE that ageing infrastructure was another challenge and being replaced.
“We don’t have any more challenges but we will see an increased number of tourists this festive season... that is [borne out] by the big events we have hosted in the City after the lifting of Covid-19 regulations, like the Hollywoodbets Durban July,” he said.
“It shows the resilience of the city and the systems put in place to try to recover from the losses we incurred during the pandemic floods. It means the city is on the right track, so we expect more people.”
TimesLIVE
Support independent journalism by subscribing to the Sunday Times. Just R20 for the first month.
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