Tag Archives: ACSA

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 12 May

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*   Tourists do not want to ‘face administrative hurdles‘ in their visa application process when travelling in Africa, said Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Chairman of the African Union Commission, at Indaba at the weekend.  Making visa applications easier, liberalising air routes, and acting against animal poaching could increase tourism to Africa, she added.  Joint visas to travel within Africa are being considered.  The African Union is working on making Africa the preferred travel destination in fifty years from now!   Another goal is to motivate Africans to travel within Africa.

*   Indaba 2014, which closed its exhibition doors today,  attracted significantly fewer buyers than in previous years, and was criticised for having become ‘stale’, and for not having re-invented itself as was promised last year by SA Tourism’s Marketing head Jan Hutton.  While larger than the recent World Travel Market Africa exhibition held in Cape Town, it disappointed attendees, many especially smaller tourism players not planning to return next year.  The speed networking sessions were a shambles on Saturday and Sunday, with many buyers not present. Costs of catering were said to be prohibitive.

*   The Great Wine Capitals Best of Wine Tourism Awards is open to entries for the 2015 Best of Wine Tourism Awards, in the Continue reading →

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 11/12 January

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*  Cape Town tops the list of the New York Times 52 places to go in 2014!  In its accolade to Cape Town, the influential newspaper writes that the late Nelson Mandela drew inspiration from Table Mountain, which he could see from Robben Island, and it became ‘a beacon of hope’. The article also highlights Cape Town hosting the World Design Capital 2014.

*   Passport control at OR Thambo airport is inefficient and marred by staff shortages, leading to complaints from arriving passengers.   ACSA says it is not its responsibility, while the Department of Immigration is not responding to feedback providing.

*   The Table Mountain Cableway welcomed its 23 millionth visitor on Friday.   It carried about 4000 visitors a day during the Festive Season, a revenue of about R800000 per day on good weather days.

*   South Africa is not the only wine producer on the African continent, even if Continue reading →

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 2/3 December

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*  The Airports Company of South Africa (ACSA) is planning to extend the runway at Cape Town International, to allow larger aircraft and more planes to land.

*   About one fifth of accommodation bookings in the USA will be last minute, same day ones next year, made via smartphone or tablet.

*   While European traveller numbers are showing a small 2% growth, the fact that they are taking more shorter and shorter distance holidays rather than long haul ones is worrying for tourism to South Africa.

*   hotel.info has beaten TripAdvisor, British Airways, Expedia and booking.com in being named most popular travel and leisure website of the year.

*   Cybercellar has sold a 24% share of its business to Continue reading →

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 20 September

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*  Premium South African wines are increasingly being  exported to other African countries, Nigeria in particular, as well as to Ghana, Angola, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

*   American travelers are likely to rate service satisfaction highest, and the Japanese tourists the lowest, with French, German, Italian, Spanish and British tourists falling in between these satisfaction rating spectrums.  This finding comes from a multicountry service satisfaction study conducted amongst a sample of 200000 travelers.

*   We have it all wrong – the most popular travel time for the UK and German market is August, tourists taking about 10 days off, and traveling to the Balearic islands, Turkey, or Greece in Europe, and Mexico on long haul trips, a TUI study of its bookings for 2013 has found.

*   ACSA is planning to introduce a service whereby one can buy duty-free goods on Continue reading →