Tag Archives: attractions

Corona Virus: ‘Racist’ criteria for support from Tourism Relief Fund leads to AfriForum court action against the Department of Tourism!

 

In following a number of topics related to the Tourism industry, and being a member of the industry as a recently qualified Tourist Guide whose income has ground to a halt, the Tourism Relief Fund offered to the Tourism and Hospitality industry as financial relief during the COVID-19 pandemic is of special interest to me. Earlier this week the Department of Tourism was sent court papers by civil rights organisation AfriForum, for its alleged discrimination based on race in its funding criteria. Industry talk also is that the Fund benefits larger formal tourist companies, and does not provide relief for hundreds of informal freelance operators such as Tourist Guides, the unofficial face of South Africa, in showing international travelers the highlights of our country. Continue reading →

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 15 June

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*   Passengers traveling by plane may be faced with hand luggage size reductions by up to 40%, it was announced last week. The new dimensions have not yet been announced, but 50 airlines have agreed in principle, reported German TV channel ZDF. Should the hand luggage not meet the new size guidelines, a charge of $25 may be levied.

*   Do hotel star ratings still matter, when TripAdvisor has become the Continue reading →

World Travel Market Africa 2014: Day 1 huge vote of confidence in Cape Town’s tourism industry!

WTM AfricaI returned to my guest house all charged up after a full day spent at the Cape Town International Convention Centre yesterday, to attend World Travel Market (WTM) Africa, the first time ever that a travel and tourism exhibition of such a stature has been held in Cape Town.

World Travel Market has been held in London for years, and is the second largest travel and tourism exhibition in the world, after ITB in Berlin, and larger than Indaba, which is held in Durban.  At the press conference yesterday afternoon it was said that Reed Exhibitions must have had tremendous confidence in Africa generally and in Cape Town specifically,  to have brought the exhibition to our city, partnering with Thebe in hosting it.  One was surprised at the many stands that had been sold, not only to Cape Town and Western Cape tourism players, but also to national brands (including Durban Tourism, which was interesting, especially as it was not manned on Saturday!) as well as a host of international brands such as Lufthansa, Singapore, Berlin Tourismus & Kongress GmbH, Dubai, Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board, Turkey, Reunion Island, Seychelles, ZambiaWTM Africa Turkey Whale Cottage Portfolio Tourism Board, Namibia WTM Africa WhaleCrier Whale Cottage PortfolioTourism Board and Airports Company, Mozambique, and many more brands, there being about 150 stands in total.  Even the Whale Crier from Hermanus paid a visit!

The communication with WTM Africa had been efficient, attendees being invited to register in advance, so that one could attend for free, which must have led to the good attendance yesterday.  While the service at the registration desk could have been friendlier, it was efficient in general.  Other than visiting many of the exhibitors, and bumping into numerous tourism players on the floor, an important benefit was the interesting programme  of talks over the two days of the exhibition.   By the time I could get to the exhibition, at about 11h15, the talk on Mobile Apps was fully ‘occupied‘ with 100 attendees,  as one of the WTM Africa staff said, which meant that we were not let inside initially, for ‘health and safety reasons‘!  After calling for a senior Continue reading →

TripAdvisor gets a taste of terrible write-ups from its own reviewers!

TripAdvisor has had a taste of its own medicine, when a new rating system of hotels, restaurants, and attractions on a 5-point scale without writing anything about the establishments to justify the score, led to such a critical outcry that TripAdvisor took it down last week, reported Tnooz.

The biggest criticism was the upsurge in ‘mysterious reviewers that had not been particularly active elsewhere on the site for months on end had prompted significant disquiet’.  Diplomatically TripAdvisor said: ‘We are always open to the results of these tests and have listened to the valuable feedback we have had over the past few days.  From this feedback, we recognise we have some work to do to ensure that the ratings are useful’, and therefore the company had quickly removed the new rating system.  For example, one TripAdvisor reviewer had posted one review per year since 2008, but was found to have posted 560 ratings in a few days when the new system was introduced.

“We believe that the TipAdvisor community is seeking many ways to provide feedback, whether via ratings, photos, room tips, or other opinions, and we will continue to look at  ways to gather these opinions to help travelers plan and have the perfect trip”, said a TripAdvisor spokesperson.  Hundreds of comments were received in reaction to the short-lived rating system, and while TripAdvisor is still collecting the information, it is no longer displaying it.

On-line reputation management company and TripAdvisor arch enemy KwikChex added its criticism, saying that the new controversial rating system would lead to even more TripAdvisor ‘mistrust and distortion‘.   The company claims that the rating system generated content from ‘pop-unders’, which are completed by many reviewers just to get rid of them. It also said that it was a surprise that TripAdvisor had introduced a new rating system when its reputation was already at such a low, given the ‘rising concern about deception and malice on the web’, and an increase in the requirement for ‘greater reliability and an end to anonymous bullying’.

KwikChex also criticised the 30 million reviews on the site, about which TripAdvisor prides itself, many of which are out of date and therefore useless.   The company is pushing for a code of conduct for feedback sites, so that users can have more trust in the reviews they read.  They are also planning to publish information to show how easily feedback resource and review sites can be ‘abused’, reports Travelmole.  In its defence, TripAdvisor replied that it regularly scans its site for reviews with bias, ‘to identify potential fraud’!  The company has said that its new rating system has not influenced the rankings in the Popularity Index.

Many establishments in the hospitality industry will laugh at TripAdvisor’s claim: ‘We take the authenticity of all content of the site extremely seriously as the integrity of the content on TripAdvisor is fundamental to our success’.   They are grateful to KwikChex for speaking out on their behalf, many having been bitten by biased, exaggerated, and blatantly untruthful reviews on TripAdvisor!

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