The Sweet Service Award goes to the Cape Town International Convention Centre and to Sollie van Wyk, the manager of its coffee shop. Yesterday afternoon, just before 17h00, I asked for a cappuccino and water at the restaurant, waiting for Fine Brandy Fusion to open at 17h30, and couldn’t believe seeing the ‘Closed‘ sign, as a number of patrons were still sitting at the tables and chairs, and a large collection of staff still being on duty. A waitress had promised that a coffee could be made, but it did not arrive. Sollie told me that the restaurant had closed, that the coffee could not be made, and that I should go to Marimba on the other end of the building. When I asked him for the name of his manager and Tweeted my frustration at not being able to order coffee (there was nothing to order to eat or drink inside the Hostex exhibition, ironic as it is a show for the hospitality industry), the cappuccino arrived. Two further groups of patrons were eventually served coffees after they too had to beg for them! My friend Bettie joined me after 17h00, and Sollie made her a coffee too. We were chatting so much that we did not notice that the staff had departed and had not charged for the coffees. The Convention Centre did follow up via Twitter.
The Sour Service Award goes to the Franschoek Literary Festival, for the reduced number of attendees at the Festival, its marketing being lacking this year (all concentrated on the Sunday Times, a newspaper which is not as widely read as before); its vague session topic names, which meant that the discussions were different to what one expected; lack of communication about changes to the schedule, information about speaker additions and cancellations should have been sent to attendees via e-mail, as Webtickets had all attendees’ contact details; the total lack of sessions relating to Social Media and books about cooking and food preparation, popular topics in the past; too many sessions related to politics, and too few focused on books and their authors; a follow-up questionnaire was badly formulated, and refers to next year’s Festival as the 2014 one!; and the four day delay in issuing the media release about the winners of its Wine Writers’ competition, almost as if the Festival organisers were embarrassed about releasing their names, given the competition fiasco last year!
The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog. Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at whalecot@iafrica.com. Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog, and in the WhaleTales newsletters on the www.whalecottage.com website.
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter: @WhaleCottage
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