The ICC building. Inkosi Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre in Durban. Picture: Supplied.
Durban - The Inkosi Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre (ICC) has tabled an ambitious plan it hopes will make the entity self-sustaining and grow its revenue.
The entity revealed its plans to increase its revenue from the current R110 million to R500m in the next few years. It tabled its plan before members of the executive committee yesterday where it detailed the challenges it faced and its outlook for the future.
Members of exco led by mayor Mxolisi Kaunda met with the leadership of the ICC including its board as part of their commitment to assess the state of the city’s entities. They recently visited the uShaka Marine Theme Park.
The ICC, which is recovering after the Covid-19 pandemic, has survived on its own funds without asking for bailouts from eThekwini Municipality.
The plan, revealed by the chairperson of the board, Glen Mashinini, aims to bring the entity at least to its pre-Covid-19 levels of profitability by 2024, and then scale up to increase the revenue to R500m a year.
The success of the entity will be based on several pillars, including investment in infrastructure inside the precinct, building of a new five-star hotel to accommodate guests, and the urgent task of addressing cleanliness in the city.
“We have infrastructure needs, we need less than R150m to attend to these infrastructure needs,” said Mashinini.
He said another task was for the city to build or own a hotel that would support the ICC, saying this would help attract conference attendees.
“We should have a five-star hotel close to the city because when dignitaries are placed in hotels far from the city it poses a security nightmare,” he said.
Mashinini was also frank about crime and grime in the city.
“Our staff members are afraid to walk to the Workshop. The crime is out of control in that area. When people come for conferences, they like to come with their families and be able to walk around. We are boxed in – on the other side is the taxi rank. These are some of the challenges we face when selling the centre abroad,” he said.
Touching on the impact of Covid-19 on the business, Mashinini revealed that at that time losses had climbed to about R300m.
“We made about R110m, and the losses were around R300m in two years, so we were operating at a loss.”
He urged the city as the majority shareholder to review the business model used to operate the entity that says the city should intervene only after the entity makes a loss, saying this was dangerous as the entity could have collapsed during the pandemic.
Mashinini said the Durban ICC must up its performance as it was in fierce competition with similar venues in Johannesburg and Cape Town, adding that these had an advantage because they received funding elsewhere that could buffer them in the event of a crisis.
“The Convention Centre in Cape Town is owned by the city and the provincial government, it receives funding and they secure events for it,” he said, pointing out that the Durban ICC was essentially standing on its own.
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