Cape Town’s Water Crisis: What the Tourism Industry Can Learn From the Myth and the Reality
Photo Credit: The view of the Twelve Apostles in Cape Town suggests little cause for alarm for tourists looking to come and enjoy the city. Skift / Rebecca Stone
Skift Take
The Cape Town water crisis has more to do with improper water management and inaccurate, inconsistent messaging than the city actually being in completely dire circumstances. That's why collaboration matters, between huge global organizations all the way down to individual travelers and locals, to promote the reality of international issues and the benefits tourism can have if done in a sustainable way.
Skift Senior Research Analyst Rebecca Stone is traveling the globe over the next year as part of Remote Year, a program that brings together working professionals to travel, live, and work remotely. She'll spend a month in 12 cities around the world that include Cape Town, Lisbon, Valencia, Sofia, Hanoi, Chiang Mai, Kyoto, Kuala Lumpur, Lima, Medellin, Bogotà, and Mexico City. And every month she'll take you along for part of the journey with a feature about her observations based on firsthand reporting and data about the changing travel industry. She'll do the jet lag. All you have to do is kick back and enjoy her compelling dispatches.
I stumbled groggily out of the bathroom after a 16-hour flight from New York’s JFK to South Africa’s Cape Town International Airport thinking about how far I was from home. As I fumbled with the sink faucet, I became confused as to why no water was coming out.
Then it hit me: There is no water.
Newsflashes and media articles came rush
