Tag Archives: Angola

President Zuma bestows highest praise on Cape Town as tourism haven and heaven!

A most unusual event on Thursday was the launch of the 2012 national tourism statistics – not by Marthinus van Schalkwyk, our Minister of Tourism, but by President Jacob Zuma – not in Johannesburg but in Cape Town! President Zuma was most gracious in his praise of our beautiful city!

In his talk held at the unusual venue and top fish restaurant Baia in the V&A Waterfront, President Zuma said that God lives in Cape Town, probably on top of Table Mountain, to great applause, reported iolnews. The President said that Capetonians should be aware of this, and especially demonstrate their friendliness when international delegations visit Cape Town for the World Economic Forum Africa meeting next week.

The tourism news shared by President Zuma is that tourism arrivals rose by 10% in 2012, more than double the average world tourism growth rate for the same period, as measured by the United Nations World Tourism Organisation.  More than 9 million international tourists arrived in our country last year, of which 1.4 million were from Europe.  Despite experience to the contrary, the UK is still measured as the top source country, with under half a million visitors, followed by the USA (over 300000 tourists), with German tourists in third place with just under 300000 tourists. Tourism arrivals from the USA and Germany rose by 13% in the past year.  China has jumped into fourth position from eighth place, with 130000 visitors, a phenomenal growth rate of 56%, followed by France in fifth position with 120000, reported Business Day.

Quick to react to the President’s visit to Cape Town, Western Cape Tourism Minister Alan Winde said that the contribution to the economy of the province by tourism was R 18 billion in 2011.  The 2012 SA Tourism statistics are not broken down by province or city, so that the Western Cape tourism performance may not have been as buoyant as that experienced in Durban and Johannesburg.  No equivalent statistics are available for the province.  The City of Cape Town has announced that it has commissioned research to be conducted over the next three years, to measure the value of tourism for Cape Town.

Minister Winde’s goal is to grow the contribution of tourism to the province’s GDP from 10% to 15% by 2015. This will be achieved by evaluating the introduction of direct travel routes to Cape Town from Angola, Nigeria, and Ghana.  In these three countries the province’s tourism promotion agency Wesgro is evaluating business opportunities for the Cape in the oil and gas, design, and ICT fields.  The Minister also announced in its media statement that tourism routes will be developed between Gordon’s Bay and Cape Agulhas, as well as in the West Coast tourism region.

Unfortunately Mr Winde’s media statement makes the fatal error of adding up all the visitor numbers for three (Table Mountain Cableway, Cape Point, and Kirstenbosch) of the ‘Big Six’ tourism attractions, a cumulative total of just under 300000 visitors, without deducting the duplicated visitors!

Once again we must question the SA Tourism statistics, having reported previously that tour operator Colin Bell had discovered that these statistics contain transit visitors in their ‘tourism statistics‘, especially those from China and Brazil!

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

Cape gets AFCON 2013 cold shoulder, no tournament tourism benefit!

Today the Africa Cup of Nations draws to a close, when Nigeria takes on little known Burkina Faso of West Africa, in the final to be played this evening at 20h30, after the Closing Ceremony commences at the (temporarily AFCON renamed) National Stadium at 18h45.  While Johannesburg and Durban appear to have benefited from the African soccer tournament, Cape Town has seen no tourism bookings during or even for after the tournament.

Cape Town lost out on being a Host City for AFCON 2013, Councillor Grant Pascoe, responsible for Tourism, Events, and Marketing, appearing to have asked too many questions of the Local Organising Committee, especially about the guarantees from government.  This cost our city the opportunity to be a Host City, to see top soccer being played, and denied the tourism industry much needed income. Pascoe tried to offer Cape Town soccer fans a consolation prize of a Bafana Bafana friendly against Norway prior to the AFCON 2013 kick-off, which had no tourism benefit at all.  Pascoe also explained that the City had committed to other events at the same time as AFCON 2013, and couldn’t cancel these events.  The only event was the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, which had booked the soccer stadia in Johannesburg and Cape Town during the AFCON 2013 period. Cancelling the concerts due to AFCON would have cost R90 million.  The ‘reckless management’ of the venue for the band’s performance at the National Stadium in Johannesburg was criticised, in impacting on its pitch, but it was judged to be acceptable for today’s Final earlier this week.

The smaller venues appear to not have as done as well as those in cities.  Last night’s third place play-off between Ghana and Cape Verde in Port Elizabeth was disappointing, with many unsold seats, it was reported. Durban’s Moses Mabhida Stadium was sold out for all its matches in which Bafana Bafana played, as well as for the semi-final earlier this week, reported The Mercury.   Durban has proudly stated that its R60 million cost of participating as an AFCON 2013 Host City has generated benefits in excess of the expenditure, estimated at R100 million already.  Tourism benefits must have been disappointing, for Durban admitting that ‘Afcon was not on the scale of the World Cup, and we did not see thousands of foreign soccer fans fill our hotels to capacity’. AFCON 2013 has been a very localised African tournament, with little international coverage.  On Germany’s leading TV station ZDF, for example, there has not been a mention to date.

Citing its success in selling out all Bafana Bafana matches, Durban challenged the Local Organising Committee to give it opening or closing ceremonies in future.  It proclaimed itself as the ‘best Afcon 2013 host city’, and bragged that the television coverage in Africa would position Durban as a ‘leading sports and tourism destination‘, hardly a positioning Cape Town would like to see go to Durban.  Durban seized the opportunity to sign a R4,4 million deal with Eurosport, on which inserts about Durban, and its sport celebrities such as Chad le Clos, and the Sharks rugby players, were featured.

Yesterday Kfm presenter Ian Bredenkamp shared in his radio show that the Cape Town Stadium, at which the Stormers vs Boland rugby match was played yesterday afternoon, had been an ideal venue for a rugby match, compared to Newlands Stadium.

Councillor Pascoe proudly Tweeted that he is on his way to London ‘to meet with 4 Premier Division Clubs’, obviously to attract them to play at the Cape Town Stadium.  Pascoe would have been fired from his position in a corporation for his faux pas in causing Cape Town to lose out as Host City.  However, as a senior DA politician in Cape Town, he is strong enough to retain his position as Mayoral Committee Member for Tourism, Events, and Marketing, despite not having much knowledge about the portfolio he controls, and therefore he has had to call in Anton Groenewald to run the show for him!

POSTSCRIPT 10/2: SA Tourism says it is ‘happy’ with visitor numbers attracted by AFCON 2013, according to Standard Digital News. Whilst actual tourism numbers are not yet available, the expectation was that 150000 soccer fans would have attended the tournament, generating $154 million for the economy.  The tourism authority focused its soccer marketing on Kenya, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nigeria.  Hosting AFCON 2013 cost South Africa $53,5 million.

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

SA Tourism on the ball in marketing South Africa in Africa for AFCON soccer tournament!

SA Tourism is calling on the tourism industry to get involved in an Africa marketing campaign and road show for the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) 2013 soccer tournament, to be held in Johannesburg, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Rustenburg, and Nelspruit from 19 January until 10 February next year, reports Southern African Tourism Update.  Sadly Cape Town has been excluded from AFCON 2013, an event expected to attract 150000 soccer fans from other African countries alone, due to Mayoral Committee Member for Tourism, Events and Marketing Grant Pascoe making unreasonable demands for the Host City bid!

SA Tourism is leading a road show this and next month in Ghana, Nigeria, Mozambique, Kenya, and Botswana, and is inviting tourism product and service owners to accompany them at no charge, but they will be responsible for the cost of accommodation and travel.  The Road Show in Ghana, Nigeria, and Angola will take the form of a workshop, including networking opportunities.  Not only will it focus on the soccer tournament, but it will also market South Africa as a shopping tourism destination for the continent.  The road show may well be to drum up support for ticket sales, Daily Maverick reporting that only 30000 of 500000 tickets have been sold for the tournament to date!

In addition, SA Tourism will be running an ad campaign on CNN, as well as with Supersport, reaching the English, French and Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa, to promote the soccer tournament.

The City of Cape Town had expressed its opposition to hosting this prestigious event, due to the cost burden, and sought a guarantee from the government for at least 50% of the hosting costs to be covered. The City was also looking to the Confederation of African Football and/or Local Organising Committee to cover 25 % of the costs.  Costs for the host city include the preparation of the pitch, fencing, security, the accommodation of the teams and officials, as well as transport plans, according to the Cape Argus. The City also was unhappy that the event would mean that other events could not be held at the Cape Town Stadium, meaning a loss of income, a poor motivation, given how few events are held at the stadium, less than one per month on average, and how desperate the City is to recover the running costs of the stadium.

Cape Town has been awarded a consolation prize friendly warm-up match between Bafana Bafana and Norway on 8 January at the Cape Town Stadium, as an introduction to AFCON!

AFCON is expected to cost the South African tax payers R461 million, reports The Times, some of the monies going to flying in African heads of state and Confederation of African Football officials.  R120 million will be allocated to the three host cities, and R165 million will go to police security.  One lane of the highways between the airports and soccer stadia in the host cities will be closed, as was the procedure for the 2010 World Cup. Despite the tighter economic situation, the government plans to use the tournament as a marketing exercise for the country.  Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan confirmed that all the ‘vanity stuff’ has been cut out of the AFCON budget, to ensure responsible tournament expenditure. The ‘funding for Afcon – we’ve cut it to the bone’, added Deputy Minister of Finance Nhlanhla Nene. South Africa was awarded the AFCON tournament after the civil war in the host country Libya made the tournament unsafe.

One can only hope that SA Tourism’s road show will include representatives of Cape Town Tourism and Wesgro, to attract soccer fans attending AFCON to visit Cape Town and the Western Cape too, despite Cape Town not being a Host City. From the World Cup experience, this would appear to be unlikely.

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

SA is not projecting the right image, affects business, says Western Cape Tourism Minister Alan Winde!

On the day that Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan presented South Africa’s mid-term budget in Parliament, and announced that SARS revenue collected is R5 billion less, and is unlikely to grow next year, Minister Alan Winde closed the Wesgro AGM with refreshing honesty, and said that the Finance Minister’s speech meant that provinces would receive the same allocation as the current financial year, meaning a lower buying power next year due to cost increases.  He also said that currently South Africa is lacking leadership, and is not projecting the right image to the outside world, given the strike of the SA Transport and Allied Worker’s Union, the Marikana massacre, and the capsizing of the Miroshga off Hout Bay.

Minister Winde’s sombre closure of the AGM reflecting the tough trading conditions which the Western Cape businesses can expect for the next two years, and which have already affected Wesgro’s performance in not meeting its top targets of Investment.  The Trade, Investment and (new) Tourism promotion body celebrated its 30th anniversary this year, and probably presented negative figures for the first time in many years.  It has an interesting method of setting targets, at a high and a low band.  In most measurements presented, Wesgro exceeded the ‘low road’, but did not meet the ‘high road’ budgets in its Investment and Trade Promotion divisions.  Wesgro Chairman Benjamin Kodisang started off the proceedings by also adding his negative view of the world, expressing that he is ‘a concerned man, who has never found the world in the situation it is in now, economically, socially, and politically’.  He challenged business persons in the Cape to ‘stand up, and be counted’, and to show leadership, as contained in Wesgro’s Vision of leading ‘the creation and promotion of a compelling global destination for investment, trade and destination marketing for the benefit of all people in the Western Cape’. Good news is that the Western Cape economic growth has outshone that of the national economy for the eleventh year running, with a growth rate of 3,1 % currently, driven largely by a 7% growth in exports, mainly of fruit.  Over a third of exports go to Asia, and one-quarter to Europe (of which one-fifth is wine).  R1,24 billion in Investment was attracted to the province in the past year, it was reported.  More than 1000 jobs were created in the same period.  The dominant export markets for the Western Cape remain the UK, France and Germany, but the West Africa Trade Corridor is gaining importance, in particular Nigeria, Angola, Cameroon, and Côte d’Ivoire.  Angola has taken over from Mozambique as the province’s largest trade partner in Africa, said Nils Flaatten, Wesgro CEO.  Brazil, India and China, all BRICS countries, are important for partnerships to promote the economy of the Western Cape.  The United Nations Procurement Programme, incorporating our province as one of only three developing areas, is a bonus for the Western Cape.

In April Wesgro incorporated Cape Town Routes Unlimited, which no longer operates by that name, but which still has a Board in place until the Western Cape Tourism Act of 2004 has been repealed, likely to be in April 2013. The Wesgro Act is being amended too, to allow the organisation to adopt the role of tourism promotion too.  Deon Cloete, Chairman of the Cape Town Routes Unlimited Board, also painted a picture of a tough economy and the effect of the incorporation of the organisation into Wesgro, the contribution of conferences to the Western Cape economy having been R254 million instead of the projected R360 million, even though the number of conferences grew.  The 1,4 million tourist arrivals means an 8% decline, while spend by foreign tourists had declined by 16% to R18 billion, he said.  The province sold 26% of the national bednights, and the average spend per day on a trip was R1420.   Cloete warned of a ‘tough year’ ahead, despite the country’s most popular tourism destination, the V&A Waterfront, being in the Cape and having achieved 22 million visitors.  Minister Winde highlighted that 600 conferences and events had been held in the Western Cape in the past year.

Flaatten said that the vision going forward is to cross-sell the Western Cape in a three-prong Trade, Investment and Destination Marketing approach.

Embarrassing is the glowing write up in the Wesgro 2011-2012 Annual Report of Cape Town Tourism CEO and Wesgro Board member Mariette du Toit-Helmbold: ‘Under her  leadership Cape Town Tourism has won critical acclaim as a Visitor Services and Destination Marketing Organisation doing sterling work at the coal face of one of the country’s fastest growing industries’. The City of Cape Town clearly does not agree, having taken the responsibility of Destination Marketing away from Cape Town Tourism, announced at the Cape Town Tourism AGM just a week ago!

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