The City of Cape Town can now add “best city for remote working” to its list of titles after making it to Big 7 Travel’s top 50 of the best places for remote working in 2021.
As the COVID-19 crisis hit employees across the globe had to adjust to a remote way of work, or work from home, as governments imposed nation-wide lockdowns to curb the spread deadly virus.
The city reveals that Cape Town was recently listed number 42 on the ‘Best Cities for Remote Working’ list, alongside countries such as Indonesia, Germany and Argentina by Big 7 Travel.
Big 7 Travel is a travel Web site, reaching an online community of 2.5 million people.
In a statement, mayoral committee member for economic opportunities and asset management, Alderman James Vos, says targeting digital nomads as part of Cape Town’s overall destination marketing strategy will become part of the city’s new international campaign when the time is right and safe to do so.
“COVID-19 has changed the way we work, where working from home has become part of our everyday,” says Vos. “If there is one positive from this pandemic, the future of work will never be the same. This puts Cape Town in a prime position to cater to the changing needs of a global workforce.
“The city’s enterprise and investment team has incorporated this position into our strategic marketing approach known as the six pillars: visit, live, work, study, play and invest in Cape Town.”
Vos adds: “Given the challenging travel landscape created by the pandemic, we need to get smarter and innovate our hospitality sector by also focusing on remote workers so the sector can benefit from this growing remote work trend with COVID-19 protocols in place.”
According to him, some of the things the city encourages the hospitality sector to consider implementing will be finding ways to attract Capetonians as well as others in the country, who usually work from home offices, to change their environment when it is safe to do so with COVID-19 protocols in place.
“These remote workers could work in spaces where there is access to a day-room, a pool, breakfast, lunch, parking and WiFi. For the long-stay digital nomads, the sector could consider revised rates and ‘home away from home’ type packaging.”
Vos notes that workers have realised that they can work from anywhere. “With so much space and natural beauty, why not Cape Town,” he concludes.
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