Category Archives: World Cup 2010

MyCiTi Bus strike poor PR for City of Cape Town!

My CiTi Bus imagesThe City of Cape Town’s MyCiTi Bus service has received mainly praise since it was introduced in 2010, just in time for the World Cup (although not meeting its deadline for the event for its original transport plans), and has praised itself recently for how many passengers its has transported, and how it is expanding the routes.  All of a sudden it is facing a PR nightmare, which it seems inexperienced to handle!

Two months ago the MyCiTi Bus service was criticised by Professor Deon Knobel, who wrote an open letter to Mayor Patricia de Lille and to Brett Herron, City Councillor for Transport, in the Cape Times.   Professor Knobel observed how wasteful the route in Oranjezicht/Tamboerskloof as well as Camps Bay is, asking some hard-hitting questions about the costs of running the service.   In the past week, the City has had to deal with two further problems, the most recent being the most debilitating in terms of the impact of its image.  It also informed Capetonians that the bulk of staff operating the MyCiTi Bus system are not employed by the City of Cape Town, but by third party contractors: Continue reading →

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 5 February

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*   Renowned international Chef Paul Bocuse is to open Ratatouille Bistro and the L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy ride at Disneyland Paris, inspired by the 2007 ‘Ratatouille‘ animated movie.  One will be able to taste Bocuse’s ratatouille.  It is Bocuse’s second restaurant in the theme park.

*   Cape Town has been awarded the honour of being the Earth Hour Capital 2014 for South Africa, and is competing against 33 Finalist cities from around the world for Global Earth Hour City 2014, reports the Cape Times.  Earth Hour will be held from 20h30 – 21h30 on 29 March, as many lights being switched off as possible in that hour.  The Earth Hour City Challenge has been created by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and  Local Governments for Sustainability.

*   The Company’s Garden is to return to its roots, in having a vegetable garden reinstated by the City of Cape Town in what was Cape Town’s first fruit and vegetable garden, established by the Dutch East India Continue reading →

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 17 December

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*   Tourist arrivals grew by 5 % in the first six months of this year relative to the same period a year ago, with close to 5 million international tourist arrivals from January – June 2013.  Tourist arrivals from France, Germany, Italy, Asia, India, the USA, and Africa grew, while those from the Netherlands and the UK declined.

*   The Spur Corporation has bought the Hussar Grill chain of six steak restaurants for R35 million, and will develop the brand, taking it national.

*   Tour operator Francoise Armour has written a hard-hitting letter to Southern African Tourism Update, feeding back the poor experience of her clients when they go on a Robben Island tour.  Given that the number of bookings for the tour will now increase, she asks whether the iconic destination is worthy of the legacy of the late Nelson Mandela. Even more shocking than her detailed list of negatives about the Robben Island tours is the comments to her letter, in which many tour operators write that they no longer build Robben Island into their clients’ Cape Town tour itinerary!

*   Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille yesterday announced at a Day of Reconciliation event the renaming of the Fan Mile to 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 →