Tag Archives: Mickey Mouse

Restaurants, MasterChef SA, and Social Media dominated Whale Cottage Blog in 2013!

Whale CottageWe used Google Analytics to identify the top ten blogposts on our WhaleTales Blog in 2013. The most read blogposts related to restaurants, MasterChef SA Season 2, and Social Media drama.  The top 10 most read blogposts in 2013 were the following:

1.  Autumn and Winter Cape Town and Winelands Restaurant Specials 2013 tops the list of most read, achieving almost three times as many unique readers compared to the other top 10 blogposts.  In winter restaurant specials are extremely important to Capetonians, as their wallets and purses are more bare.

2.   The year started off with a Social Media explosion, when ‘Mother Superior’ Blogger Jane-Anne Hobbs attacked us on Twitter,  protecting her ‘chicks’ Michael copy-and-paste Oliver, mommy Tweeter and then occasional CEO of Cape Town Tourism Mariette du Toit-Helmbold, former political poor-spelling-grammar ‘PR’ and Communications Consultant Skye Grove at Cape Town Tourism, and Eat Out editor Abigail I-love-Giorgio-and-Luke Donnelly.  We retaliated with a blogpost (‘New Year kicks off with Twitter bullying, bashing, and blackmail’) which attracted so much attention that Hobbs must have regretted her Tweet, as all ‘sins’ of the four ‘chicks’ were laid bare! Continue reading →

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 1 October

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*   A 13-series ‘5 Sterre met Reuben‘ launched on kykNET today, with Chef Reuben Riffel cooking a three course meal, paired to a wine, and chatting to a product sponsor.  The program will air on Tuesdays at 17h30.

*   The last three MasterChef SA blogposts we wrote received record viewership in September, the blog achieving a record of almost 40000 unique pageviews), according to Google Analytics. The most read blogposts were the prediction of a controversial MasterChef SA end, Ozzy Osman’s controversial elimination, and Kamini Pather’s controversial win.  The competition we ran to predict the MasterChef SA winner also featured on the top blogpost list, as did our review of La Parada on Bree, the Winter Restaurant specials, the recent restaurant openings and closures, the ‘Mickey Mouse’ training done Continue reading →

Open letter to Minister of Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk

Dear Minister

We have been very happy to have you as our Minister of Tourism, especially when your portfolio became a dedicated one. Since May, however, I sense that our tourism authorities in cities, SA Tourism, and your department are seeing the development of a crisis in our tourism industry, but that nothing is being done about it.   I remember a song Jeremy Taylor once sang about the Ministers that ‘minis’ – I feel that you and your department are ‘minis-ing’, not playing open book with us, and that you are deserting us in our time of need.   Here is why:

1.  You appointed tourism consultancy Grant Thornton, who created fantastic forecasts of how many tourists would come to South Africa for the World Cup.  The recession hit the world in 2008, and at no stage did Grant Thornton revise its forecast for the event attendance.  On the basis of their projections, Cape Town alone saw the addition of 9 new hotels and 1500 beds, not to talk about the numbers of apartments that were hastily vacated and renovated, for letting purposes.  We all painted and polished our guest houses, yet the soccer fans that came to stay were just like all our other tourists in the end.  Home and flat owners, taken by Seeff’s campaign with Gary Bailey as a spokesperson, sat with empty accommodation when they cancelled leases with their existing tenants to make a quick buck.

2.  You allowed us to be ripped off by MATCH, a FIFA affiliate hospitality company, who milked us with unheard-of commissions of 30%, with your blessing!  And then they cancelled the largest part of the booked stock, on their own favourable cancellation terms, just eight weeks or less prior to 11 June 2010. 

3.  You sent the Mickey Mouse team from Disney  to quickly spruce up our service excellence, at a cost to taxpayers of R9 million or so, a waste of time for all that attended.  Our nation is one known for Ubuntu, and we were recognised for it as one of our success factors – we did not need Disney to teach us that!

4.  But it is the current post-World Cup crisis, which Cape Town Tourism confidently tells us a year down the line was predictable, given the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games example, that is getting to all of us.  The Bureau of Economic Research survey results released earlier this week shows us that confidence in the Accommodation sector is at its lowest ever, at 25 % (even estate agents are more confident at 41%, and they are not having a great time!). There has been no growth in confidence since 2007, even though we knew that the World Cup was coming in 2010.

As the most senior official driving tourism in our country, we would have expected that you would guide and lead us, that you would tell us what drastic steps your department and SA Tourism are taking to help us to get international tourists to our country, and local ones to our cities and provinces.  All we hear from you is how successful South Africa has been, and how the World Cup has contributed to this success. For the first time you have acknowledged that things are not going so well, and that “growth in the tourism sector is expected to slow down towards the end of 2011“, reports Eye Witness News about your address to FEDHASA Cape earlier this week.  You are reported to have said at that same meeting that ‘visitor number (sic) still look good following the country’s successful hosting of the soccer showpiece.  The minister replied by stating some establishments invested too much in catering for an influx of tourists prior to the tournament”!  Sir, with respect, it was your consultants that guided us on visitor numbers.  Now the proverbial has hit the fan, and there will be none of us left in this industry if you are saying that it will get even worse towards the end of this year! 

5.  I feel for you, being reliant on those on the ground to feed back to you how bad things really are, and that you are misinformed and misled by some.  I cringed when I read that FEDHASA Cape Chairman Dirk Elzinga put the poor booking situation down to the usual Cape winter seasonality, demonstrating that he is not a hotelier, and does not have a clue about the hospitality industry, having headed up the Cape Town International Convention Centre previously.   I was depressed by Cape Town Tourism’s long-winded acknowledgement that something mustbe done about changing how Cape Town is marketed, as if we have months and years to do so.  Cape Town Routes Unlimited has been the most proactive in talking to our industry via the media, in asking us to slash our rates, but clearly they do not know that we charge rates of up to 50 % less in winter, and have done so for the past 15 years or more.  Many ofus have not increased our summer rates since 2007, yet costs are rising continuously.

6.   Your own consultants Grant Thornton are saying that not enough local and international marketing is being done, especially in the newly opened markets of China, India, Brazil, Mexico and Argentina.  I like that you have addressed the ‘silo’ mentality of the tourism industry, as reported in the Cape Argus, and even see this at our local level.  Cape Town Tourism and Cape Town Routes Unlimited are operating independently, and without apparent collaboration.  High airfares are one of the reasons for the poor tourism performance – please help us to get SAA to price flights realistically, so that we can get the tourists to our country.  Help us to get direct flights to Cape Town, instead of via Johannesburg.  It is interesting that you identified that the power of tourism is in the hands of a small number of powerful operators. Share the tourism pie with all of us.  Please open the doors, and create dialogue between the different sectors that feed and sustain the tourism industry. I was shocked to hear that the Board of Directors of Cape Town Routes Unlimited is now hand-picked by provincial Minister of Tourism Alan Winde- what happened to getting privatesector input, via nominated Board candidates?  All we are getting is the same perpetuation of provincial-friendly players and their thinking, and most Board members that were newly elected in April are unknown to us! 

We are receiving no guidance from your Department, SA Tourism and our local tourism authorities about how we keep our businesses afloat, and how we prevent a bloodbath of restaurant, hotel and guest house closures in the next few months, which has already started.  It does not help to hear that your CEO of SA Tourism, Ms Thandiwe January-McLean, has just resigned, and will leave at the end of August, in a time that we need SA Tourism desperately. 

Sir, we need your help.  Help us with negotiating extensions of bond repayments at the banks; help us by not allowing the Reserve Bank to increase interest rates; help us with better tax breaks; help us by getting electricity increases suspended; help us with loan facilities to help us survive and to continue to offer employment to our staff; help us with an urgent campaign to encourage locals to travel – it has been talked about but we are not seeing its impact; help us by pushing PR internationally, to not allow South Africa, and the Cape in particular, to lose visibility when New Zealand hosts the Rugby World Cup in September and October; and lastly, be honest with us – do not give us false hope by telling us how fantastic our industry is right now.  We are bleeding Sir, and we need your help!

POSTSCRIPT 16/6:  Business Report today quotes the Minister as saying: “Although tourism had continued to grow since the World Cup ended last July, the industry was slowing down worldwide.”  He is also quoted as saying that international tourism growth to South Africa will continue but that we must “be more competitive than our opposition”.   He added: “Our prices and products must remain competitive, and unnecessary cost drivers must be identified.”  He would not be issuing price guidelines, and he confirmed that the traditional source markets remain Europe, the UK and the USA, due to their longer holiday period, but recognises the longer-term value of the Asian market.  He urged that visa applications for tourists be made easier, and even become electronic.   The Minister’s Department of Tourism is to set up a conventions bureau, to spread the business ‘beyond the three main cities’, and he indicated that benefits could flow from the expiry this year of the current system of granting air traffic rights to fly into South Africa. 

POSTSCRIPT 17/6: Southern African Tourism Update  reports that the Minister is to have also said at the FEDHASA Cape AGM that local tourism authorities should not market internationally, as SA Tourism is doing so already, and that they should focus on local marketing instead.  He quoted the example of KZN Tourism, which has a marketing office in Gauteng.  Was he addressing Cape Town Tourism and Cape Town Routes Unlimited? 

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter:@WhaleCottage

Mickey Mouse fails to WOW World Cup South Africa!

After sitting through a 2-hour Service Excellence workshop to turn South Africans into service ambassadors for South Africa during the World Cup, run by Be and Jeff from the Disney Institute of Orlando at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC) in Cape Town on Friday, I could not help but be disappointed relative to the high expectations the invitation to attend the workshop had created.

First, an invitation to attend a Disney-run service excellence workshop is not to be sneezed at, especially if attendance is free, and there was no restriction on attendance numbers from a particular company.  The target audience was frontline staff of the South African Police, Department of Transport, Department of Home Affairs, Tourism Business Council, South African Revenue Services, the Retail Association of South Africa, the Banking Association of South Africa, airlines, hotels (we are sure that they meant guest houses and other forms of accommodation too!), and restaurants.

The Auditorium of the CTICC holds an audience of 1000 – no more than 100 front-line staff attended the Friday afternoon session – the morning session had been attended by about 700 persons, the organisers estimated.   The previous day the sessions had been held at a church in Goodwood- this was the sum total of the workshops for Cape Town’s hospitality, tourism and general service front-line staff.   A Friday afternoon, and a rainy one at that, probably is a bad day for attendance in Cape Town, and parking anywhere near the CTICC was impossible to find, given the Good Food & Wine Show, which had dominated the CTICC, especially given its star attraction Gordon Ramsay. 

Having obtained parking, we sat in the massive auditorium, and the two Disney staffers tried a number of participative techniques to get some life and energy into our audience, including blowing a vuvuzela.   I have been to Orlando, and attended a Relationship Marketing Conference at Walt Disney World a good 15 years ago – I loved every minute of the Disney Magic, and I know that the Disney Institute is regarded as the ‘University of Service Excellence’.

All the more the disappointment of the lightweight presentation by our two Disney “cast members” – all staffers are on show, and therefore they have this designation.   Leaving the presentation, I could not help but think that this was the cleverest way in which Disney could have marketed its Walt Disney World (and related parks in California, Paris, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and soon to open Shanghai), and be paid for the pleasure of it!   A gi-normous Disneyworld park (biggest employer in USA with 60 000 employees in Orlando alone), could in no way compare to our little tourism and hospitality businesses in South Africa, excitedly facing the event of a lifetime, the World Cup.

We were shown videos and photographs of Walt Disney World, and interviews with South Africans working at the park, all eschewing the Disney mantra of smile, smile and smile!   The presentation was mainly focused on Disneyworld, and once in a while the presenters seemed to remember that they were in South Africa, and that they had to adapt their material to our big event.

The presentation in essence covered the following:

1.  Setting a vision – we know what it is for Disney (to be universally recognised as the most admired company in the world).  For World Cup South Africa it was defined as follows: “Deliver a pleasant and unforgettable service experience for the world visitors during the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa and beyond”.

2.   Defining a “common purpose” – at Disney this is for all ‘cast members’ to pick up the garbage and to give directions to their guests (not “customers”) with two fingers (not just one) or the whole hand.  For World Cup South Africa this was defined as follows: “Just now to WOW all customers“.  This mantra was repeated over and over again.  The “just now” introduction was a “South Africanisation” of the Common Purpose, supposedly reflecting how we speak (I’ll do it ‘just now’), badly reflecting service excellence, in that one would do something for the customer “immediately”, and not “just now”!

3.  “Guestology”, a Disney term for getting to know one’s customers in terms of where they come from, who they are, how large their party is, the length of their stay, and what their needs, wants and expectations are.   The presenters presented the audience with the profile of the typical World Cup soccer fan : travelling in groups of eight persons, predominantly males, 25 – 45 years old, wanting to experience things in-between the matches.

Key service excellence tips presented throughout the presentation were the following:

1.   Company leaders must share the company vision with their staff – this rarely happens

2.   The bottom-line will reflect good service excellence, but should never be the end-goal

3.   Everyone in the company is responsible for excellent customer service

4.   Customer service is not a department, it is an attitude

5.   Customer service is not only provided to customers, but should also be provided to colleagues

6.   The staff’s interaction with customers creates “magical moments” but can also cause “tragical moments”.

7.   “Treat every customer as if they sign your paycheck… because they do”

8.   Service must evoke emotion and drive repeat business

9.   Put a smile in one’s voice.

10.   Surprise and delight one’s guests

11.  Sometimes the guests are wrong, or cannot be served in the way they desire – say “NO”, but offer them an attractive alternative

12.   “I may not have the answer, but I’ll find it.  I may not have the time, but I’ll make it.”

13.   Make eye-contact and smile, smile smile…

14.  It all starts with respect

The bottomline: a most disappointing presentation, given the calibre of the Disney Institute.  It lacked the WOW it was meant to instill in us as front-line staff meeting soccer fans in 25 days from now.   It did not teach us anything new in how we deal with our guests.  It was a monumental fail, given that the Department of Tourism is said to have spent R 9,5 million on putting an estimated 250 000 (the number is questioned, given the poor response in Cape Town, perhaps only 10 % of this number) attendees through 75 two-hour workshops in all the Host Cities and related areas.    The Department of Tourism’s 3-page evaluation questionnaire we received on arrival was poorly typed, in that the rating scale from 1 – 5 was not aligned to match the written descriptions of the scale in numerous places.  It asked us to rate a “facilitator”, but we had two, and they had very different personalities, meaning that they could have been rated very differently.  The structured questions were not all suited to the answer options provided.   Certain questions were in grey panels, making them unreadable, an irony as the service excellence Disney had been preaching to us for two hours was not reflected in this poorly drafted questionnaire, which was meant to evaluate the Disney performance!  A pleasant surprise was that we did not have to pay for the very expensive CTICC parking!

We all left with a “Certificate of Successful Completion (of) the The Disney Approach to Service Excellence, World Cup and Beyond”.    We also received a business card with 3 “Service Guidelines & Behaviours”, to carry with us at all times:

 “.  I present a positive attitude at all times

  .  I am considerate and respectful to ALL customers

  .  I go over and above in my position”      

To see the objectives of and motivation for the Department of Tourism’s Tourism Service Excellence Initiative (the poor Disney presenters just could not get their tongues around the name of the Initiative) Service Excellence workshops, read here.

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com

World Cup Service Excellence drive can only be Mickey Mouse!

The Department of Tourism has announced a last minute service excellence campaign “Tourism Service Excellence Initiative” (TSEI) for all front-line staff dealing with soccer fans during the World Cup, less than one month prior to the start of this world sport event.   While its intentions are extremely noble, and it will be offered for free, a two-hour session will hardly make any difference to generally poor service attitudes in Cape Town and South Africa.

The Department of Tourism has contracted The Disney Institute from Orlando to conduct a number of free two-hour seminars around the country, the Cape Town ones taking place next Thursday (at His People Center in Goodwood) and Friday (at the Cape Town International Convention Centre), at 10h00 and 14h00 on each of these days.  The same presentations will be held in Stellenbosch on 15 May, in George on 17 May, and in Knysna on 18 May.

The Disney Institute is a highly regarded “university of service excellence”, and a company like Pick ‘n Pay has regularly sent its managers to Orlando to improve its stores’ customer care and service excellence.   But it is impossible to change a service mentality in 2 hours!

The Western Cape province sent the invitation to attend the seminars in Cape Town as a Press Release, and it states that one can call to make a booking (a friendly and reasonably efficient process requiring ID numbers of staff, and more) or go the TSEI website www.tsei.co.za.    Dr Laurine Platzky, the “2010 FIFA World Cup Coordinator from Provincial Government Western Cape”, describes the seminars as “energetic” and “inspiring”, their aim being to “give all football guests an unforgettable experience in the Mother City and the Province”.

The TSEI document has the logos of the Department of Tourism, TSEI and the Disney Institute, as well as of FEDHASA, at the bottom of the document. FEDHASA’s has a web address linked to it (no other web addresses are supplied), but it is not FEDHASA’s web address – it is the web address of FEDHASA CEO Brett Dungan’s private Rooms4U booking portal, which has been criticised on this blog previously!

The TSEI document states that customer service should be improved “in anticipation of the millions of guests to the games” (our underlining).   One wonders where this statistic comes from – 3 million tickets are meant to have been sold, but this does not mean 3 million ticket holders, given that tourism consultancy Grant Thornton has estimated that each visitor will watch 5 matches on average, reducing the number of ticketholders to 600 000 on average!   Also, one talks about “games” for the Olympics, but for the World Cup they are called “matches”!   In a “mastery” of copywriting, it claims that The Department of Tourism had in 2008 already “crafted” (did they mean drafted?) the Tourism Service Excellence Strategy, to “take Service Excellence in the Tourism Service Value Chain to greater heights”. 

It then explains why service levels must be taken to greater heights, in that service excellence in the past has been hampered by (wait for it…….) “the negative impact of apartheid (!), a largely autocratic management style (!), the lack of an established culture of customer service, insufficient training, systemic educational concerns, the poor image of the service industry by most, and the harsh economic realities of many workers who remain focused on survival rather than service” (our exclamation marks).  Phew!  

Internationally, we rank in the middle, at 62nd of 124 countries, on competitiveness, in the 2007(!) World Tourism Council Competitiveness Report.   The Department says that the level of service delivery ranges from good to very poor in our country.   That is why it has appointed The Disney Institute to conduct Service Excellence Seminars, “which are designed and focused in creating a culture of service excellence”.  Come on – can a 2-hour seminar create a culture of Service Excellence, no matter if it is presented by The Disney Institute?! 

Boldly the document continues about the objectives of the Service Excellence Initiative, all defined as being for “2010 and beyond”:

1.  “Championing service transformation

2.   Creating a customer service orientated SA

3.   Crafting a ‘solution-minded’ customer service culture in SA

4.   Providing human behaviour solution to SA

5.   Ensuring SA delivers world-class customer service

6.   Touch the entire service economy so that 2010 leaves a legacy”.

While it is clear that not all points are meant to be addressed by the seminars, the last one is – once again, how can they think that they can achieve this in two hours?!

The document states who should attend, and it lists immigration and customs officials, the police, tourism officials, “local government”, as well as private sector front-line staff in tourism and travel, hospitality, petrol stations, transport and banking.  Each participant is to receive a certificate and a Service Guideline Card, for which an extra half an hour has been allowed.

The best is kept for last – the value that a company’s staff will gain from attendance at the seminars:

“*   Engage employees to be personally involved in creating and delivering quality customer service

 *   Explore the significance of performance accountability, ensuring an equal weight value between business results and employee behaviors (sic) that enhances a positive work culture (straight from the Disney Institute literature no doubt)

 *   Learn the significance of creating and sustaining a corporate culture by design rather than default (?)

 *   Introduce the concept of “Common Purpose” as the organization’s chief global service driver” (we are tiny local non-global tourism related businesses in the main!)

The final best is the “dynamic” pay-off line that the copywriter ends off with : “Be Brilliant – Tourism Service Excellence Initiative” !!!!!!!!!! 

If the Department of Tourism’s Tourism Service Excellence Initiative document is anything to go by, its Service Excellence Workshops will be Mickey Mouse!  I cannot wait to attend, to experience this magical 2-hour transformation in Service Excellence!

POSTSCRIPT:  After writing this post, I found an article written earlier this week by Natalia Thomson of S A Tourism Update about the same topic.  She writes that the Disney Institute contract is worth R 9,5 million, and that 250 000 persons will be put through the workshops around the country.   Read her cynical and critical article here.

Read our follow-up article about the presentation here.

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio : www.whalecottage.com