Cape Town International Airport hosted a day-long seminar today, to share retail business opportunities with emerging and established business owners. The event was held at the Double Tree by Hilton Hotel in Woodstock with over 400 business owners, entrepreneurs and members of various organisations such as the Black Management Forum and South African Black Entrepreneurs Forum in attendance.

An airport relies on two streams of revenue, thus aeronautical (regulated) revenue and non-aeronautical (retail, property and advertising). The aim is to reduce the reliance on aeronautical revenue and this can be achieved through the expansion of other sources such as the retail component.

Over the years the airport’s retail offering has grown significantly. When the central terminal building opened in 2010 it went from 44 stores to 74 stores, nearly doubling the offering. “It remains key to ensure that our retail offering meets the need of the customer. We’ve recently concluded research which has largely affirmed that the airport’s retail mix is good. We compete with shopping malls and so our challenge is to demonstrate to brands that there is value in doing business at the airport”, said Deidre Davids, Communications Manager at Cape Town International Airport.

Soon a number of tenders will be issued for stores in the International departures duty free area as a first phase. For the airport, these tenders alone will be valued in the region of R92 million. Following this, various other opportunities will be put out to tender. “We hosted the information session because we wanted to create awareness regarding these opportunities. More so, our business has adopted a progressive transformation strategy and we are committed toward supporting new business and SMME’s (small medium and micro enterprises). It is our aim to look at ways in which we can lessen barriers to entry for these businesses”, added Davids.

This session is the first of its kind, but will be followed later in the year by a bigger summit where the airport will showcase other business opportunities in its environment.

“The airport abides by the strictest procurement guidelines, we are bound by legislation when it comes to tender processes. All tender submissions will be subjected to the procurement processes which include compliance to the legislation in terms of tax clearance with the South African Revenue Services, the company’s capacity and capabilities as well as price and the BBBEE score”, concluded Davids.