Tag Archives: ACSA

Cape ‘Tourism crisis’ denied, just a ‘cyclical slump’ says tourism marketing body!

When one reads a headline “Destination South Africa is doing well” in the Cape Times last week, one cannot help but wonder how two senior tourism personalities can attempt to tell tourism players specifically, as well as Capetonians in general, that all is well, when it is generally known that it is not, most tourism players having experienced the worst ever winter.  The summer season ahead looks gloomy, with a substantial absence of UK tourists.

Calvyn Gilfellan is the CEO of Cape Town Routes Unlimited, whose organisation is going into a strong PR offensive, issuing media releases almost daily, a welcome change in that this tourism body, marketing both Cape Town and the Western Cape, is now telling the tourism industry what it is doing.  Cape Town Routes Unlimited appears to have identified an opportunity to out-PR Cape Town Tourism, which now spends most of its communication energy on Twitter, and rarely issues media releases.  Dr ‘Nicklaus’ (actually Nikolaus) Eberl is MD of Brandovation, a branding and marketing consultant who was particularly visible during the 2010 Soccer World Cup, in guiding South Africa’s branding during this world event, having been a consultant to the 2006 World Cup in Germany too.  It is interesting that Gilfellan and Dr Eberl have got together to write a lengthy tome on how well we are doing in tourism, denying that there is a tourism crisis, but then justifying why there is a ‘current cyclical slump’!

The authors of the article deny that the Western Cape tourism is in ‘crisis’, but acknowledge that ‘our industry is currently under severe strain’! As we have written before, we ask what’s in a name.  One cannot help but think that both Cape Town Tourism and Cape Town Routes Unlimited do not want to be held responsible for a tourism industry that appears to be suffering more than in any other part of South Africa. Interesting is that the authors do not mention how poorly the Garden Route is doing, for example, which saw the auction of three hotels in Mossel Bay last week, and a letter addressed to a local newspaper confirmed the desperate conditions in this region of the Western Cape.  Having a guest house in Plettenberg Bay, which has been temporarily closed for business since January due to a lack of business, we can confirm how serious the tourism crisis is in this once-popular region of the Western Cape.

Correctly the authors state that due to global changes, tourism marketing and operations require change. But stating that the Japan earthquake, the northern Africa revolution, the terror in Norway, the London riots, and the ‘turbulence in our own society’ (not explained) influence tourism to our region is not understandable. The ‘enduring American and European debt crises’ must be the most important factor to blame, coupled with the high cost of airfares, airport taxes and the strong Rand. ‘Blaming games’ (what could they be referring to?) are ‘counter-productive’ , they write, yet the authors themselves try to justify why tourism in the Cape is doing so poorly, citing low occupancy, hotel closures, accommodation oversupply, increased operating costs, and travel being a luxury.  Seasonality is blamed as well, and has been the prime complaint of tourism players over the years.  Promises are made year after year by both Cape Town Tourism and Cape Town Routes Unlimited that this Cape-specific problem will be addressed with events and marketing campaigns during winter months.   Instead of getting better, seasonality has become even more pronounced, and reached its peak, in our experience, during the past winter, meaning that tourism players have had to dip into their scarce savings generated in summer, to stay alive financially.

Quoting the Statistics South Africa first quarter 2011 tourism arrival increase of 7,5%, they write that ‘destination South Africa is doing well’!  While the past summer season was not as good as experienced in previous years, the real impact of the tourism crisis only hit the industry in May.  The industry rejects the arrival statistics anyway, in counting cross-border shopping visits from residents of our neighbouring countries.  Added to this, our industry is ‘doing well’, they write, as seven new airlines are to fly to Cape Town, the BRICS countries offer big tourism potential (and percentage increases in arrivals are quoted, off low bases), the World Cup offered excellent exposure for the Western Cape (we would argue that it was for Cape Town at best), and interest in information about our region is good in Brazil and Argentina.

To help tourism businesses with ideas to ‘thrust us into the next decade’, the authors suggest the following:

*   marketing techniques must change, to adapt to the changed world around us

*   tourism development and promotion must be ‘responsible, environmentally conscious’

*   the industry must ‘take full ownership’ of the establishment of the Western Cape Economic Development Agency,  led by our provincial Tourism Minister Alan Winde, of which much has been talked about but little concrete information has been seen.

*   ‘we need to be really clever, and creative, with our pricing strategies, adding extra value wherever possible’. There can be few tourism businesses which have not already slashed their rates, many to pre-2007 levels, for the forthcoming summer season.

*   Social Media must be more widely adopted by the tourism industry (ironically Cape Town Routes Unlimited has not done so yet!).

The authors’ over-optimism about the future of our tourism industry is not convincing. They write:“Tourism has proven to be one of the most fickle, but also most resilient sectors of our economy and will overcome the current cyclical slump.  We therefore remain optimistic that together we shall overcome this and future hurdles in our quest to create a better tomorrow for all our people”.  Our response to this is as follows:

*  Stop defending the existence of a ‘tourism crisis’, and use the time to get on with marketing Cape Town and the Western Cape.  Business has NEVER been so poor!

*   Stop duplicating marketing Cape Town by Cape Town Tourism and Cape Town Routes Unlimited.  This is a costly overlap, and little joint marketing appears visible to the industry.  Ironic is that Cape Town Tourism is working with SA Tourism, Gauteng Tourism and the Durban tourism authority, yet the two Cape Town-based tourism agencies are not appearing to co-operate!

*   Continue informing our industry about what you are doing for us, but please do not patronise us with information that is different to what we experience at grass-roots level.  Use us for information (accommodation bookings are a good indicator for the coming tourism season), so that your predictions can be more accurate and realistic.  We can share with you, for example, that there is a minimal number of UK tourist bookings for the coming summer, a massive loss for our industry, and worthy of ‘crisis’ status in itself, having been our major source of business over the past years.  We can also share that we are seeing a most welcome increase in bookings from Germany, a country still relatively buoyant in economic and travel terms, despite being increasingly under pressure to support the economy of Europe and the Euro.  But the German tourism gain will not make up for the UK tourist loss.

*  Lobby for more accurate arrival statistics

*   Lobby SAA and ACSA for more reasonable airfares and airport taxes, respectively, especially as there are ACSA representatives on the Cape Town Routes Unlimited and Cape Town Tourism Boards.

*   Cape Town is receiving marketing support from Cape Town Tourism.  The rest of the Western Cape is suffering, and needs urgent marketing by Cape Town Routes Unlimited.

*   Employment is not mentioned in the article at all. Surely the benefit of a booming tourism industry is to maintain, and ideally to grow, employment of our local population.  Help us with directing young interns to our industry, and help us to educate staff about the important role that they play in tourism.

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

Toro Wine Bar Sweet and OR Tambo Airport Sour Service Awards

The Sweet Service Award  goes to Toro Wine and Aperitif Bar, for their generosity in inviting us to join the birthday table of Renata Cinti, mother of co-owner Matteo, when we went there on Monday evening. The table included Renata’s friends Giorgio and Simonetta Dalla Cia, and good friend and former Bridge House School lift club mom (with Renata) Lyndall Erasmus.  Grazie! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Sour Service Award  goes to ACSA and its OR Tambo Airport in Johannesburg, nominated by Mike Said:  “Without fail there are no smoking signs at each and every entrance/exit and without fail there are people leaning against these signs and smoking. This makes entry and exit through those doors a most unpleasant experience not to mention a health risk. I am certain that it is contrary to some law but it is not so much for that reason that I bring it to your attention.  Walk out of any of the doors and you are met with plumes of smoke and discarded cigarette butts scattered over the ground (is there anything less considerate than a smoker?).  Now I have also noticed the EXCEPTIONAL job that the traffic marshals are doing in ensuring that nobody is able to park for a second longer than is permitted. I have seen cars being chased away and towed away. In fact I myself have had to wait as my driver circles the airport if my luggage is fractionally delayed. Now you may sight that this is a safety aspect and I fully agree but then so is the health of the millions who must pass through (the) doors every month”.

 

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 info@whalecottage.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.

Franschhoek Bastille Festival Sweet Service and ACSA Sour Service Awards

The Sweet Service Award  goes to the businesses of Franschhoek, Franschhoek Wine Valley association, DnA Events, and especially the visitors to Franschhoek over the Bastille Festival weekend, for the fantastic ‘gees’, for dressing the part in the French colours, and for making Franschhoek the most fantastic place to be last weekend. 

 

The Sour Service Award  goes to the Airports Company of South Africa (ACSA), for its increase of 35 % in airport tariffs for the current financial year, and for announcing a 37 % average annual increase, (69 % increase for international flights!) without explanation or justification, for the next three years, reports Business Report.  The tourism industry is in dire straits, and is already reeling due to the high cost of flights, as well as the strong Rand.  The increase in tariffs, which ACSA had wanted to originally increase by 133%, are a further deterrent to tourism to South Africa, something the tourism industry cannot afford.

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 info@whalecottage.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.

‘Cape of Good Business’ is ‘cool’ in winter too!

Three directors of Cape Town Tourism and heads of important Cape Town business tourism businesses have joined forces to make a plea for how “cool” Cape Town is in the winter months, a period typically plagued by seasonality, with far reduced accommodation bookings, which has an impact on all sectors of the tourism industry. 

In an article in the Cape Times last week, Guy Lundy of Accelerate, Ian Bartes of Cape Town International airport, and Rashid Toefy of the Cape Town International Convention Centre wrote that of all South African cities, Cape Town is unique in its seasonality, which “makes it hard for the hospitality industry to be sustainable”.   They add: “With 18  five-star hotels now operating in the city, we must find ways to increase visitor numbers during winter.”  The tourism leaders says it is not a surprise that Cape Town sees so many restaurants opening and then closing, in that they build restaurants to meet capacity support in summer, but cannot see this through in the winter months when business falls away.  They also state that the number of passenger arrivals in April and May is half of that in December and January.

They blame this on the positioning and marketing of Cape Town as mainly a leisure destination, which “always seem to feature the Waterfront, Clifton and the Winelands on their covers”, with not enough promotion of the city as an investment and business destination.   Conference facilities, factories and office blocks do not feature in the city’s marketing collateral.   They call for more direct international flights to Cape Town, and more flights between the city and other African cities, to make Cape Town a world business destination, and a global African city, given that it already has a world class airport, good hotels, excellent infrastructure, ‘some of the finest restaurants’, natural beauty, entertainment, world-class technology, sophisticated business networks, and a favourable time zone for doing business with the UK, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. 

To make Cape Town a global business destination, it needs to be considered for meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions (the M.I.C.E. market).    The Convention Centre is ranked 34th in the world in size of business, and it plans to double its capacity to reach its goal of making the top ten list.    Winter is an ideal time for conferences, the writers say, in that most activities take place indoors.   Whilst conference delegates spend less time in a city on average, their average spend is higher than that of a leisure tourist.   The writers also state that the businesses of the Western Cape, e.g. food and wine, oil and gas, boat-building and ship repair, design, film, technology, renewable energy, asset management, business process outsourcing and medical research should expose their businesses to overseas markets via exhibitions and conferences, to attract business travellers to Cape Town and the rest of the Western Cape, including Winelands, West Coast and Overberg towns.

The World Cup demonstrated what a good winter weather city Cape Town can be, with rain on only three of the match days, and snowfalls on the mountains for a short while during the soccer tournament month.  The soccer fans were not put off by the rain and cold, and their ‘gees’ was not dampened in any way.   This leads to a renewed call for the ‘green season’ to be marketed in the winter months.  The cooler Cape weather is attractive to visitors from the Middle East, and the Asian countries, who have to endure hot and humid weather at that time.  The writers also suggest a winter sale, which reduces accommodation, restaurants, and clothing, as is done in Paris, Singapore and New York.   The writers seem unaware that the small accommodation industry has been leading the tourism sector for years, in reducing its rates by as much as half in winter.  This year the restaurants in Cape Town and the Winelands also came to the party, and offered good winter specials, some even extending these into current summer specials.

We support the writers’ call for more events to be hosted to attract visitors, but it is sad to read that the City of Cape Town does not have enough funding to support big events (there is activity by Cape Town Routes Unlimited in marketing a small number of approved events, all hosted in summer months).  

If Cape Town had no seasonality, airlines would fly into the city all year round, and would bring travellers, making tourism business more viable and reducing unemployment.   It is for this reason that the business tourism leaders ask that the tourism industry get on board the Cape of Good Business!  

It is interesting that the three writers are Board members of Cape Town Tourism, which focuses almost exclusively on leisure tourism, while the business tourism business that they are pleading for is in the domain of Cape Town Routes Unlimited, on which Board only ACSA is represented, and on which the three tourism leaders may have been able to make a greater contribution than at Cape Town Tourism.

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