Tag Archives: Ajax Cape Town

Cape Town winter seasonality has little chance of recovery! Politicians not playing ball for tourism!

Once again the tourism authorities are paying lip service to Winter Seasonality in Cape Town and the Western Cape, and it is rather sad to see the City of Cape Town scramble to host events this coming winter which in all likelihood will make no difference to the tourism industry at all.

Cape Town Tourism CEO Mariette du Toit-Helmbold has admitted to the Cape Argus how grave the effect of Seasonality is on our tourism industry: ‘Despite growth in tourism of late, seasonality remains the biggest threat to our tourism industry. Many misperceptions exist around winter being an undesirable time to visit.  This is a critical issue for an industry that employs more than 300000 people and is the second largest contributor to the Western Cape’s GDP. Tourism role-players in Cape Town long ago realised that Cape Town needs a 365-day brand position to fill beds during the quieter months’. Unfortunately in her ten years of heading up Cape Town Tourism, she has not made any contribution to the worsening effect of Seasonality on the Cape tourism industry.

The new City of Cape Town Tourism, Events, and Marketing department has egg on its face, for the Liverpool/Ajax Cape Town soccer match, which was scheduled for next Tuesday, having to be called off.  The City has blamed the Premier Soccer League (PSL) for the fiasco.  Mayoral Committee member for Tourism, Events and Marketing, Councillor Grant Pascoe, who traveled to the UK earlier this year to sign up a number of soccer clubs for friendlies to be played in Cape Town, angrily hit out on his Facebook page yesterday at criticism directed at him in the Cape Times by COSATU Secretary General and ANC Councillor Tony Ehrenreich, who called for disciplinary action against Pascoe for the handling of the soccer saga, with its resultant wasted costs and loss of reputation for Cape Town.  Words between Ehrenreich and Pascoe sound more like a political slanging match than a genuine concern about enhancing the number of tourists in our city!

Pascoe followed this up with a poor media release issued by the City’s Integrated Strategic Communication and Branding Department: “City responds to allegations of mismanagement surrounding the cancelled visit of Liverpool FC. In response to the press statement from COSATU, “Livepool (sic) Saga shows a Serious Mismanagement from City of Cape Town”, I am able to comment on only those facts that are known to me, and not on vexatious rumours. The City is inclusive and would consider any and all similar proposals from other Cape-based teams. Ajax Cape Town FC, in good faith, negotiated with the South African Football Association (SAFA), and Liverpool FC with the English Football Association for permission for the match to take place. Permission from both these bodies was granted. In a letter from SAFA to the CEO of the Premier Soccer League (PSL), SAFA states, ‘we are therefore granting your club permission to participate in this International Friendly Match, provided they comply with FIFA regulations governing international matches, and that FIFA responds favourably to the application’. Based on this positive correspondence, the City continued engagements with Liverpool FC, and made arrangements for the game to take place. There are no guidelines or regulations for PSL teams, or external organisations, to follow that govern these arrangements. They are assessed purely on a case by case basis. To the City’s knowledge, no prior applications have been refused before this one. After extensive consultations, including trying to find an alternate date, a solution could not be found to suit all concerned. It is the City’s position that the reputational damage lies with the PSL. Even their sponsors have actively distanced themselves from the decision taken. The City will not be deterred or deflated by this obstacle, and is actively negotiating several other sporting events to bring to the people of Cape Town”.

To address Ehrenreich’s criticism, the Cape Argus ran a story yesterday, to announce the two new events which the City of Cape Town has organised for the winter months.  The first is the Cape Town Performance Arts Festival, which is due to attract ‘between 10000 and 15000 people at the festival from all over the country, as well as international guests‘!  No details were found about the Festival, which is scheduled to take place in July without exact dates specified, other than that it is an arts festival which will include dance, music and other art forms which will be held in the V&A Waterfront, Artscape, and the City Hall, the newspaper reported!  If a Festival of this scale is to be hosted in Cape Town in two months from now, one would have expected that details would have been made available already, and that the marketing work will have commenced, by both Cape Town Tourism and the City’s Tourism, Events, and Marketing department!

In August the Cape Town Design Exhibition Conference takes place at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, with 4000 delegates expected to attend, the focus being on Cape Town’s design challenges.  No further information was found.

Disappointingly the City of Cape Town’s Tourism, Events, and Marketing department has not managed to make any visible marketing impact on Cape Town’s tourism industry in the past year. The odd soccer match, the Cape Town Design Exhibition Conference, and the Cape Town Performance Arts Festival are unlikely to make any significant difference to the poor and declining occupancies which the accommodation industry is suffering each winter!

POSTSCRIPT 16/5: The Pundits website today posted Councillor Pascoe’s explanation about the cancelled soccer match, and wrote critically about the confusion the announcement of the match and subsequent cancellation had caused. It also advised the City of Cape Town to use the official channels when negotiating with international soccer clubs.  The post was written by a Jason Pascoe (relationship to Councillor Pascoe unknown, but hinted at being the son of Councillor Pascoe by a comment writer!), and oddly enough was Retweeted by Councillor Pascoe!

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

Cape Town and Western Cape enjoy an egg-cellent Easter weekend!

It was less an Easter weekend breakaway, and more the Two Oceans Marathon, that filled up Cape Town in particular this weekend, an astounding 28000 runners from Cape Town, other parts of the country, and other countries participating in the Half and Full Marathon yesterday. It is probably one of the last busy tourism weekends for a few months, as the end of the Easter weekend signals the end of the tourist summer season.

A media statement received from Western Cape Tourism Minister Alan Winde estimates the contribution of The Old Mutual Two Oceans Marathon at R80 million.  It is a shame that the Easter weekend appears to co-incide with extreme weather conditions, the gale force South Easter blowing in excess of 100 km/hour yesterday, being a challenge for many runners, as was the torrential rain a year ago.

This weekend saw the start of another large event, taking place in Oudtshoorn, being the ABSA Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees (KKNK), running for a week.  The Minister’s estimate of the economic contribution of the KKNK is R95 million.

Other events this weekend were a soccer match between Ajax Cape Town and AmaZulu at the Cape Town Stadium (but poorly advertised), and the Raka unplugged music festival in Swellendam from tomorrow until 3 April.  World-renowned Shanghai-born and New York-based Tian Jiang pianist performed at a well-attended charity performance in Franschhoek, organised by La Residence for the Lelieblom House for Children and the Stuart Andrew McFarlane Foundation for Motor Neuron Disease, and attracting visitors from Johannesburg and London.

Events certainly attract tourists to Cape Town.  It is a shame when they co-incide, and one hopes that the province and Wesgro, with the City of Cape Town, have many plans for events during the Seasonality problem-child period of May until September!

We wish all our guests, staff, suppliers and blog readers a Happy Easter.

Photograph: Orphanage Cocktail Emporium’s Hot Cross Bunny Cocktail, created in celebration of its first anniversary yesterday!

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

Bafana Bafana v Norway International at Cape Town Stadium a failed tourism AFCON 2013 consolation prize for Cape Town!

Last night visiting soccer team Norway beat our national team Bafana Bafana 1-0, played in an International at Cape Town Stadium.  Billed as a consolation prize for the fact that Cape Town did not make the AFCON 2013 host city bid, the event last night made no contribution to attracting tourists to Cape Town at all!  The match was seen as a warm-up match for Bafana Bafana’s participation in AFCON 2013, which starts in ten days.

One wonders how the City of Cape Town can allocate millions of Rands of ratepayers’ monies to its newly created Tourism, Events, and Marketing Directorate, led by its Executive Director Anton Groenewald and reporting to Mayoral Committee member Grant Pascoe, when they are so poor at handling any marketing of Cape Town and the organisation of events in the Mother City!  The department is under pressure to earn revenue from its biggest (loss-making) asset, being the Cape Town Stadium.  It was odd then that yesterday one could read on Facebook and Twitter about the frustrations last minute ticket purchasers experienced at Computicket, only single seats being available yesterday morning, even though the full allocation of 40000 seats for the match had not yet been sold.  A new release of tickets was promised by the City, but did not appear to have been made.  On Monday morning the City was using the local radio stations to market the event, it being claimed that only 8000 tickets had been sold.  One also read on Twitter that tickets could only be bought at Computicket, and were not available at the stadium itself, which appears to be a marketing weakness too!  Last week the City placed print ads such as the one in this blogpost in the local newspapers, to encourage ticket sales, clearly a home-made design job!

The City’s media statement quoted Groenewald as saying that ‘the match is a sign of its commitment and and continuous support for Bafana Bafana‘, despite the soccer team only having played in Cape Town for the second time in three years!

Even though the City has seen it in the past, when Manchester United played Ajax Cape Town last winter, soccer matches do not attract out of town visitors to Cape Town. The same was the case yesterday, for two reasons. The soccer matches are supported by local Capetonians, and the support clearly is not attractive enough yet for Western Cape residents to drive from other cities and towns to see the match, especially as the starting time of 20h30 was so late.  Even more so this starting time would have necessitated accommodation for out-of-town soccer fans, but we did not see any enquiries or bookings for the soccer match.  In addition, Cape Town is still bursting at its tourism seams, and so if there had been a tourism requirement, there would not have been any space for them to be accommodated in a suburb such as Camps Bay!   One wonders why the City chose a date for the match at a time when Cape Town did not need any additional visitors!

Had the Cape Town Stadium been full tonight, with all 40000 seats sold at an average price of R75 (ticket prices were R100 and R50), the total revenue would only have been R3 million, which would not have covered the costs.  We know that the City buses in soccer fans for free in the last minute to save face, that Computicket would have charged the City of Cape Town a fee per ticket sold, that not all tickets will have been sold, and that more cheaper tickets will have been sold, meaning that the real income may have been closer to R1,5 million income, hardly worth the effort in terms of costs relative to income.  The match also damaged the image of the City of Cape Town, in reflecting its inability to organise and market events!

It was the City of Cape Town and its Councillor Grant Pascoe that have cost Cape Town, and with it its tourism industry as well as soccer lovers, a vast income which Cape Town would have earned had it been selected as a Host City for AFCON 2013, which kicks off on 19 January, and runs over three weeks. South Africa was awarded the African soccer games when FIFA cancelled Libya as the host country due to political turmoil.  The City of Cape Town owes the tourism and hospitality industry lost income!

POSTSCRIPT 9/1: The following comment about the ticket sales by the City of Cape Town was posted to this blogpost today: “I’m afraid it gets worse. The inside track has it that due to slow ticket sales days before, they utilised their own infrastructure to sell tickets, with the MyCiti kiosks etc. And of course, when they were deluged with last-minute sales, they had to re-load all those tickets on computicket, at a 1000 tickets per time. Which was a huge disadvantage to all those queue-ing as those tickets were snapped up online within minutes of their being loaded onto the system. Hence the estimate of 10 000 turned away at Computicket due to tickets being “sold out” Groenewald sheepishly claimed they didn’t take into consideration that Capetonians buy tickets at the last minute! Oy va voi!”

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

City of Cape Town misleads tourism industry on ‘winter’ performance!

One wonders what Councillor Grant Pascoe, the City of Cape Town’s Mayoral Committee member for Tourism, Events, and Marketing, hopes to achieve by bragging about a supposed positive‘winter’ performance, having ‘defied the odds, with visitors flocking to the city’, as reported by the Cape Argus yesterday, when the industry experience is that business this winter has been worse than the very poor 2011 winter!

The first error in the article is defining ‘winter’ as the April – June months. April is not a winter month, containing a mix of summer until Easter, and then going into autumn, and generally has an above average occupancy, given its large number of public holidays, which is normally good for tourism business.  In May winter starts and stretches until the end of August.  This means that the City of Cape Town and Councillor Pascoe are adding apples and pears to come up with meaningless performance information, which excludes the very wet and cold July and August, which were detrimental to the tourism and hospitality industries, to make himself and Cape Town Tourism look good! Yet the article did admit that ‘Cape Town Tourism’s report for April to June found that seasonality remained a challenge. A drop in visitor numbers during winter was an ongoing problem. In response to this, the city needed to find a way to make sure it was an all-year destination’. Every year the tourism authorities blame Seasonality for the poor winter performance, promise to create and encourage more events in this period, and nothing changes, with winter occupancy levels decreasing rather than increasing.

Councillor Pascoe referred to a survey which Cape Town Tourism conducts amongst its members, very poorly as we have seen when participating in the unprofessionally designed questionnaires in the past, and used airport arrival figures as well as visitor information numbers to try to justify his positive message. He also referred to the so-called success of the Thompson’s campaign, based on three poorly designed Cape Town Tourism ads placed in the Sunday Times in June, and the Manchester United and Ajax Cape Town match, which we reported had made no tourism impact at all (he was clever enough to not make a tourism story out of the failed ‘booby prize’ Eight Nation Under 20 soccer Tournament, in return for having lost the bid to host the Africa Cup of Nations in Cape Town early next year)!

Councillor Pascoe praised Cape Town Tourism for ‘having started drafting plans well ahead of winter’, yet its CEO Mariette du Toit-Helmbold had to admit in March that due to budget constraints many of the marketing programs presented to the industry at its AGM in October had to be cut. “We put in a lot of effort and are happy that some of these things are coming into fruition. And we are glad that they worked out favourably.”  Few tourism players will agree that anything has ‘worked out favourably‘ this winter!

Ever the optimist, Councillor Pascoe forecast that Cape Town would be able to ‘double the numbers by next winter‘!  He said: “We will push hard. We know we’re up against many other cities, but these numbers show we can compete with the best of them.”  We have asked in the past, and request again, that tourism officials present an honest picture of the tourism industry, and not mislead those that have a far better overview of the reality of the tourism industry performance than the City of Cape Town and Cape Town Tourism have! (In similar vein, tourism operator Colin Bell has written to Southern African Tourism Update about the exaggerated tourism statistics coming from SA Tourism)!

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