Cape Town Tourism and Cape Town Routes Unlimited are pulling out all the stops to welcome tourists to Cape Town and the Western Cape this festive season. Both tourism bodies are optimistic that Cape Town will experience a bouyant festive season.
Cape Town Routes Unlimited has branded its summer campaign with the mouthful ‘Summer is here, Summer is NOW – where else would you want to be?’! The campaign consists of a list of 101 things to do in Cape Town and the Western Cape.
The 101-list includes destinations that are out of the ordinary, and not usually on the visitors’ lists, including sipping champagne at dusk on Table Mountain, following the historic West Coast Mission Station Route from Mamre to Vredendal, wandering around the beautifully restored Victorian village of Matjiesfontein (in the arid Karoo); a national monument, staying overnight on Table Mountain’s Hoerikwaggo Trail – a luxury mountain trail, visiting a food market: Stellenbosch’s Slow Food market, Woodstock’s Biscuit Mill and Tokai’s Porter Estate, joining in the countdown to the 2010 FIFA World Cupâ„¢ and taking a guided bus tour onto the soccer pitch of the Green Point Stadium, currently being built in Green Point, learning to make cheese in the Cape Winelands, following the trail to the Maltese Cross or the Wolfberg Arch in the Cederberg, kayaking around Cape Point, seeing albatrosses and other seabirds on a pelagic birding trip south of Cape, watching Shakespeare come alive at the annual Maynardville Fair in Cape Town, cage diving with crocodiles in Oudtshoorn, learning about Khoi culture at Cape St Blaize Cave in Mossel Bay, slurping oysters in Knysna, taking a donkey cart ride into the Swartberg, watching a polo match in Plettenberg Bay, star-gazing in the Cape Karoo, picking your own cherries, olives, strawberries, apricots, grapes and other luscious delights all year round, paddling an inflatable or a canoe down the Berg River, kite-surfing at Bloubergstrand, watching the Cape Winelands’ garagistes (boutique winemakers) at work, walking through the unique Cape Floral Kingdom – the smallest yet most diverse of only six in the world, a walking tour of Bo-Kaap, learning to surf at Muizenberg, drumming at various venues in the Western Cape, and feeding the squirrels in the Company Gardens, near St Georges Cathedral.
The 101-list is impossible to read due to its small type size when printed out from the website, which is a shame, in that it restricts the list to motorists visiting the information centers at the entrance to the Western Cape. It also contains the predictable tourism destinations, like Table Mountain, the V & A Waterfront, Kirstenbosch and Boulder’s Beach, which is exacly what the list is trying to avoid.
Cape Town Routes Unlimited CEO Calvyn Gilfellan says of the campaign: “It highlights the tourism wealth of the Western Cape and encourages people from all over to exprience the best the world has to offer in 101 accessible and mostly affordable ways.”
The campaign is domestic tourism focused. Billboards at the airport, as well as the handing out of welcome packs, the 101-list, and branded caps, sunscreen, lip balm and tattoos at the Storms River and Beaufort West visitor information centres, are two elements of the campaign. A competition is also being run on Facebook, whereby visitors are required to ‘grab their cameras, hit the road, and exprience as many of the exciting things to do on the 101 list as possible.’
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