Tag Archives: BA

Eat Out Judge Bruce Palling embarrasses New Media Publishing and Eat Out Top 10 Restaurant Awards!

New Media Publishing must be regretting its decision to have appointed Bruce Palling, controversial Eat Out judge and UK food blogger, to co-judge the Top 19 (originally Top 20) Finalist Restaurants with its editor Abigail Donnelly this year, to improve her credibility after a number of controversial Awards were made by her in her capacity as sole judge last year. Yesterday a Tweet from Bruce Palling announced that he will not be attending the Eat Out Gala Restaurant Awards Dinner at The Westin hotel on 25 November.

From the outset the expectation was that Bruce Palling would attend the Eat Out Gala Restaurant Awards Dinner, and one wonders why the details about the class of flight and his involvement on the night of the awards ceremony had been left to a mere three weeks before the event.  Palling had promised the staff at Belthazar that he would come back to eat at the restaurant on his return to Cape Town at the end of November, so it had certainly been discussed, and a contract signed, one would assume.

Yesterday Palling’s Tweet attracted attention: “Sorry to announce that will not be attending Eat Out Awards ceremony – due to “unforeseen circumstances” New Media won’t provide me a ticket”. New Media Publishing did not Tweet or e-mail a response.  We wrote to Bridget McCarney, MD of New Media Publishing, and called Mango, its PR agency.  Ms McCarney responded last night, indicating that pushy Palling had insisted on a first class ticket from London to Cape Town (costs can vary between about R49000 for a BA or Virgin ticket to R67000 for Emirates, while an economy class ticket would cost about R11000), and that he would not accept an economy class ticket nor a video broadcast with him from London!   She wrote as follows:

“Thanks for your email.

We were looking at whether there were more cost efficient ways of doing this rather than a business class ticket for Bruce to attend the awards. The idea was that we would have a video insert of Bruce talking about the awards or a direct live link.

Bruce declined to do the video and didn’t want to fly economy for such a short trip which of course we completely understand.

So yes, I can confirm that Bruce won’t be attending the awards at this stage

Trust that answers your question

All the best

Bridget”

The Eat Out DStv Food Network Restaurant Awards 2012 have been marred with controversy, not only because of the appointment of Palling, who only very occasionally has articles published in the Wall Street Journal European edition, and now hidden by a paywall, and whom no one had heard of locally nor in the UK, yet Mrs Donnelly sung his praises and overstated his credentials for her own benefit; for Palling’s embarrassing Tweets slating springbok and politically incorrect references to the race of customers of a restaurant; for his rude and disparaging Tweets about our blogposts about his time in Cape Town and the Winelands, which New Media Publishing refused to take action against; for Palling’s unfair criticism of Belthazar on his last night in Cape Town; for the embarrassing selection of The Pot Luck Club as a Top 20 Restaurant Finalist, when both Mrs Donnelly and Chef Luke Dale-Roberts knew that the restaurant had not been open for a full year, and which judging criterion was not picked up by Palling, which led to the elimination of the restaurant from the Top 20 Finalist list of honour; and now the spat with Palling, which he undiplomatically Tweeted to embarrass his hosts!

Once again we say that Eat Out Editor Abigail Donnelly has served her time, and her bias for and against some of our country’s top restaurants two years running means that she no longer has the credibility to be in charge of the Eat Out DStv Food Network Restaurant Awards!

POSTSCRIPT 6/11: Bruce Palling has responded (surprisingly gently, other than referring to me as a ‘slug‘, and claiming to be the subject with Eat Out of some sort of conspiracy by ourselves) to this blogpost on Twitter, denying the allegation that he demanded a Business Class ticket, as indicated by New Media Publishing: ‘@Gabbles17 Love the idea of me being the embarrassment! Certainly never ‘demanded’ or even mention 1st class fare – beyond that silence’. He also referred to recent surgery, and that he therefore cannot travel ‘steerage with two day turnaround’. He must have removed a disparaging Tweet, as he apologised to @LawHollander :“Well, I went to your country and loved the food – I apologise for earlier Tweet”, but that Tweet is no longer in Palling’s timeline.

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

Prices of international direct flights to Cape Town deterrent to tourism! Cape Town talks Turkey!

Doing research about Turkish Airlines’ direct flights to Cape Town, the subject of a recent trip to Turkey by a 10-person Cape Town Tourism and City of Cape Town delegation, we found that many direct flights are exorbitantly priced,  and that Turkish Airlines is one of the more expensive flights to Cape Town from Europe! One wonders why the City delegation did not visit all the cities in Europe that offer direct flights to Cape Town, or those offering more reasonably priced flights.

The dates chosen for the cost comparison of the airlines flying direct to Cape Town from Europe was departure on 1 November and return on 8 November, with the lowest airfare reflected below:

Air France  (Paris)                                            R 7775

KLM (Amsterdam)                                            R 8085

SAA (London via Johannesburg)                  R 11457

Virgin Atlantic (London)                                 R 11542

BA (London)                                                        R 12002

Turkish Airlines (Istanbul)                             R 13545

Edelweiss (Zurich)                                            R 16489

Lufthansa (Munich)                                         R 27453

Lufthansa (Frankfurt)                                     R 27630

Given that a maximum of 4800 tourists could arrive in Cape Town on four weekly flights from Istanbul per month, at exorbitant flight prices, the justification by Cape Town Tourism CEO Mariette du Toit-Helmbold for her team’s recent trip to Turkey does not make sense.  Writing that Turkish Airlines (but not knowing their correct name) is introducing four direct flights from Istanbul to Cape Town per week, she said that her visit was to ‘promote bilateral trade and tourism’. Other goals were to ‘showcase Cape Town’s natural and urban offerings, investment opportunities, as well as the city’s creativity and our appeal as World Design Capital 2014’, she wrote. Trade promotion is not the mandate of Cape Town Tourism, nor is it that of the City of Cape Town and its newly formed Tourism, Events and Marketing (TEAM) Directorate!  Marketing World Design Capital 2014 is not the mandate of Cape Town Tourism either!  She continued her justification:

“During the nine-day trip a twin city agreement will be signed between Cape Town and Izmir. The City of Cape Town has been officially invited by the mayors of both Istanbul and Izmir for bilateral meetings on trade and tourism promotion. The trip includes pre-organised business meetings and experiences, as well as a dinner event for key stakeholders, including tourism boards and destination marketing organisations, embassies and consulates, as well as Turkish Air (sic) and key media.  Just as Cape Town is the gateway to Sub-Saharan Africa, Turkey is an access point to Europe and Asia. Turkish Air’s (sic) decision to fly direct to Cape Town from October is a great opportunity to collaborate in growing arrivals from both new and established markets. This trip is the perfect opportunity to showcase Cape Town as both a leisure and business tourism destination and to build new partnerships. Turkey has a vast creative economy which includes everything from food to fashion, architecture, retail, jewellery and art. It is a beautiful country that relies heavily on its natural assets, and so it is fitting that we sign a twinning agreement with a city which is in many ways quite like our own. We hope to collaborate on increased responsible tourism and leveraging our creativity, and we go with the aim of increasing tourism and trade between our two regions. This group expedition is the first trip jointly undertaken by tourism, business and city officials, illustrating how serious Cape Town is about positioning the city as an urban destination open for commerce in all areas of business”.

Interesting is that since the return of the delegation to Cape Town almost a month ago, the City of Cape Town and Cape Town Tourism have not issued a media statement nor a report about the wasteful Turkey trip, to share with the ratepayers of Cape Town and the members of Cape Town Tourism exactly what they have learnt, what they achieved, and how many tourists we can expect from Turkey!  Only one ‘business’ person was a member of the delegation, Peter Ayub, who owns the cookery school Sense of Taste in Istanbul and in Cape Town!  His role appeared to be to find the best places for the delegation to eat at.  At the AGM on Thursday, Alderman Patricia de Lille dedicated two sentences in her speech to the Turkey trip: “Recently, I have had the privilege of leading a City delegation, including representatives of Cape Town Tourism to Turkey.  During this visit it was again evident that Turkey and related markets hold enormous potential for increasing tourist arrivals into Cape Town”. No further detail was provided, and the ‘related markets’ were not defined.   City of Cape Town Executive Director for Tourism, Events and Marketing Anton Groenewald also referred to the trip in his speech at the AGM, echoing a similar message, the Mayor’s speech probably written by his directorate!

SA Tourism, Wesgro, and Cape Town Tourism have never defined Turkey as a target market for tourism to our city or country!  The potential tourism numbers seem far too low to have justified the time and financial cost of the delegation’s visit.  The delegation obviously did not do a good enough job of informing Turkish Airlines about our city, its website profile of Cape Town stating that ‘Cape Town is one of the cities that will host the 2010 FIFA World Cup’! Provincial Tourism Minister Alan Winde recently agreed that the smarter marketing of Cape Town would have been to invite the Turkish tour operators and media to Cape Town!

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

Is SAA heading for a crash-landing? Disaster for Tourism!

SAA has been in the news in the past few days for all the wrong reasons, eight of its eleven Board members having resigned in what must signal the lack of confidence in the management of the airline and its future.  As our tourism industry is strongly reliant on SAA to bring tourists to the country, and to Cape Town specifically, the SAA situation is of vital importance to all tourism players.

Cheryl Carolus, Chairman of the SAA Board, is one of the Directors who resigned, with Bonang Mohale, Russell Loubser, Louis Rabbets, Jabulani Ndhlovu, David Lewis, Teddy Daka, and Maggie Whitehouse, but she has not motivated her decision.  Russell Loubser has been vocal, saying that SAA, SA Express, and Mango deserve the support of the South African government, being its largest shareholder, but that they are not receiving it, reported The Citizen. Loubser called for emotional, financial, and moral support, given the economic downturn and the competitive airline industry. The operations of the company have had to be executed in accordance with the Public Finance Management Act, he said, which meant that they could not run the company as a commercial enterprise, in which they would ordinarily hire and fire staff, or change routes. ‘But a company like SAA which is totally dependent on the government requires in return the total support of the shareholder. And right now it is finding it difficult to work with the shareholder’.  Issues that have been tabled for months do not get resolved, Loubser explained, particularly the burning issue of an additional R6 billion which the airline requested from the government to execute a strategic plan which had been approved by the government. He said that in the past three years since he had been a member of the SAA Board, the company had ‘never been properly capitalised’.

The resignations were precipitated by the delay in the tabling of SAA’s Annual Report by the deadline of 30 September, as the auditors had not finalised the financial statements, and the funding request not having been finalised with the Treasury, reported The Times. The funding requested is to cover fleet replacement costs, the introduction of a premium economy class, and the extension of business class cabins on long-haul flights. Yet Ms Carolus stated that the Minister is ‘lying’, as the financial statements have been completed, and withholding them is ‘illegal’, reflecting on the Board directors, reported The Times today. The Annual Report for SA Express was also delayed.  Last year the financial statements for SA Express had to be withdrawn, when found to be ‘materially misstated’. Last month the Minister fired all except one Board member of SA Express, for accounting errors going back to 2008!

Earlier last week Ms Carolus had summarised the Board’s achievements as flying to new destinations, sacrificing domestic routes to the benefit of international routes, modernising and increasing the fleet, and in addressing fraud and corruption.

Minister of Public Enterprises Malusi Gigaba appointed eight new directors to caretake the Board positions, with Vuyisile Kona as the new Chairman, and Andile Mabizela, Andile Khumalo, Bonisizwe Mpondo, Dr Rajesh Naithani, Carol Roskruge, Raisibe Lepule, and Nonhlanhla Kubeka as the new Directors, representing expertise in the fields of aviation, management, state governance, and finance, and which he said would assist the government in ‘propelling the airline to greater heights‘!  The Minister issued a statement, describing the resignation timing as ‘bizarre’, and condemned ‘the leakage of confidential government information’ as an ‘abuse of free speech’, without explaining what information leak he is referring to.  The Minister also explained that the term of most Board members would have come to an end anyway, at the scheduled AGM on 15 October.  The Minister assured staff, passengers, and suppliers that the Board resignations would not disrupt the operations of SAA.

Cape Town’s tourism industry was badly hit by SAA’s decision to close down its Cape Town – London direct flight route in mid-August, selling one of its three slots at Heathrow, and creating a Southern African hub in Johannesburg, forcing all international SAA flights to land in Johannesburg, and then connect to Cape Town on a domestic flight.  This strategy is proving fatal for tourism, as we continuously receive feedback that international flights arriving simultaneously at OR Thambo airport are causing Passport Control and Baggage Collection congestion, meaning that the connecting flights are missed by international visitors, for which SAA tries to cash in on ticket change charges!  This is a dreadful first tourist impression of our country!

The declining quality of SAA’s food and beverage service and poor hostess service was well-documented by German wine writer Mario Scheuermann, who flew from Frankfurt to Johannesburg, to attend CapeWine 2012 in Cape Town last week.  He wrote that the wines were of sub-standard quality, and ran out two hours after take-off, that the food was dreadful (his photograph), and that the mineral water had run out before landing in Johannesburg.  The party of German VIP visitors missed its connecting flights due to the congested airport facilities, and had to wait for three hours to catch a new connecting flight to Cape Town!

Despite this sounding unpatriotic, we would encourage international visitors to fly to Cape Town with any airline other than SAA, and to avoid flying into the country via Johannesburg at all costs!  Direct Cape Town connections are or about to be offered by BA and Virgin from London, by Edelweiss from Zürich, by Lufthansa from Munich, by Emirates from Dubai, by Air France from Paris, by Turkish Airlines from Istanbul, and from Amsterdam by KLM.  Maybe  the cancellation of SAA’s Cape Town-London route is a blessing in disguise for our city, given the poor reports about the airline’s service and quality!

POSTSCRIPT 2/10: Swedish guests checking in at Whale Cottage Camps Bay today praised the ease of connection via Swiss from Copenhagen to Zürich, and then the direct flight by Edelweiss to Cape Town, for its friendly service and fantastic price of R 5500 each for the full return trip.

POSTSCRIPT 2/10: Today it was announced that the government has given SAA a ‘guarantee’ of R5 billion!

POSTSCRIPT 2/10: Southern African Tourism Update has published a letter today from a tour operator reporting on two client flight cancellations due to overbooking, handled unsympathetically by SAA staff.

POSTSCRIPT 3/10: Mario Scheuermann has shared the details of his return journey on SAA two days ago.  The food quality was slightly better, there was more wine available but the quality offered still was poor.  There was a problem with the cooling, so all beverages were warm, i.e. not cooled!  The service was equally poor.  Interesting would be to hear the evaluation of the food and wine offering by the SA Culinary Olympics team, which was on the same flight to Frankfurt!

POSTSCRIPT 7/10: The Times reports that the smaller independent airlines are furious that SAA has been given a R 5 billion lifeline by the government, saying that this is driving low-cost airlines out of business. Nine out of 11 airlines that started operating locally in the past 20 years have gone into liquidation, mainly due to an oversupply of domestic seats, ‘a legacy of the optimism of 2010’. Now 1time wants a bail-out by the government too.  The small airlines are asking for a cut in the fuel levy, as well as reduced fees for ACSA, Air Traffic Navigation Services, the SA Weather Service, and the Civil Aviation Authority.

POSTSCRIPT 10/10: Southern African Tourism Update reports this evening that the new Chairman of the SAA Board is questioning why the Cape Town – London route was cancelled, and is apparently in talks with the Mayor of Cape Town Patricia de Lille to reinstate the route.  One wonders why he is not talking to our Western Cape Minister of Tourism Alan Winde, the CEO of Wesgro Nils Flaatten, and/or Cape Town Tourism CEO Mariette du Toit-Helmbold!  One of the three SAA slots at Heathrow have been sold, which may make the reinstatement difficult.

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

Wesgro’s marketing of Western Cape: around the world in 80 days already!

After having met Wesgro CEO Nils Flaatten two months ago, a week after he had taken over the responsibility for marketing the Western Cape from Cape Town Routes Unlimited, which organisation was incorporated into the trade and investment promotion agency on 2 April this year, we requested feedback about the progress made in marketing the region. Mr Flaatten had asked the industry to give him a month to get the organisational integration completed. An e-mail request for feedback on the marketing progress earlier this month led to an invitation by Mr Flaatten to meet with him on Tuesday.

The most exciting news for the local tourism industry, and Mr Flaatten’s first major challenge, is the 5 July meeting called with SAA’s General Manager Theuns Potgieter by Wesgro with 15 players in the Western Cape, including local and city government, an Eastern Cape tourism marketing body representative, and larger tourism companies, to discuss SAA’s decision to cut its Cape Town-London route as of 15 August. The airline will be asked to motivate its decision in culling the route.  Joint destination marketing between the Western Cape and SAA in bringing in tourists from destinations such as Beijing, Sao Paulo, Mumbai, Melbourne, various African destinations, and Buenos Aires will be discussed too.   Subsequent meetings will be held with the airlines which will continue to serve the Cape Town-London route, including BA, Virgin, and Emirates, to discuss bringing in more flights to Cape Town.

The parking organisation was perfect, and Mr Flaatten chose for us to go to Doppio Zero on St George’s Mall for the meeting.  He had copies of the slides which he used for his recent presentation at FEDHASA Cape’s AGM, which I had requested via his secretary, but the wait was worthwhile, as Mr Flaatten was able to explain his points in greater detail.  Mr Flaatten is a very precise person, and he referred repeatedly and proudly to the progress that he and his new team have made in the ‘two months and 19 days’ since their integration. In the past 80 days Wesgro has undertaken the following Marketing activities:

*   Mr Flaatten and Solly Fourie, Head of the Western Cape Department of Economic Development and Tourism, accompanied an (unnamed) Chairman of a JSE-listed hotel company to Buenos Aires, to meet six outbound tour operators. Mr Flaatten praised their product knowledge of the Western Cape. He said that the withdrawal of the Cape Town-Buenos Aires Air Malaysia route is a serious blow to tourism from Argentina. His journey from Cape Town to Buenos Aires via Johannesburg took 24 hours, previously a direct flight of 7 hours flying west.

*   Bjorn Hufkie from Wesgro’s Conventions Bureau accompanied the (unnamed) Managing Director of a JSE-listed hotel company to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait

*    Participated in exhibitions: Arabian Travel Market in Dubai, IMEX 2012 in Frankfurt (incentive travel, meetings and events); and Indaba in Durban. Mr Flaatten said that all six the RTOs were represented on the Western Cape stand, and that they will ‘raise the bar’ for 2013.

*   Debbie Damant has been part of SA Tourism’s marketing mission to China and Japan

*   Met with Cape Town Tourism, the largest RTO (regional tourism organisation) of the six in the Western Cape, asking some ‘tough questions’ of them

*   Met with Eden RTO, and some of its LTO’s (local tourism bureaus)

*   Met with SAA at Indaba (prior to SAA’s bombshell announcement about the Cape Town-London route)

*   The Western Cape Tourism Barometer for the fourth quarter of 2011 was released.

*   The Wesgro website has been updated, incorporating its new additional Destination Marketing role, clicking through to the tourism information previously on the Cape Town Routes Unlimited website

*  One of the greatest achievements is the detailed listing of over 100 events in the province in the next six months, with detailed information about each event

*   Organisationally, the activities and marketing focus of the six RTOs (Cape Town, West Coast, Eden, Cape Winelands, Central Karoo, and Overberg), and its tourism bureaus within the municipalities within the RTOs have been captured, within a Customer Relationship Management program.  An intensive Facebook campaign to interlink and like the LTOs and RTOs is underway.

Looking ahead for the next 10 months the focus will be to deliver on the Annual Performance Plan in respect of destination marketing; create operational efficiency, effectiveness and cost savings, which savings will go into the Events budget, Mr Flaatten said; fill staff vacancies; strengthening relationships with the RTO’s and LTO’s, international airlines operating from Cape Town International, tourism trade bodies, SA Tourism, and other national tourism bodies; ‘impactful marketing and advertising of the destination’, website integration and marketing strikes in respect of tour operators, to keep up the ‘share of mind’; aggressively market the Conventions Bureau, pushing conferences into the provincial towns and villages too; stimulate Events and fund smaller events; and SMME development.   Wesgro is pitching to host SIAL Cape Town, which would become a fantastic new food event creating a ‘Global Food Marketplace’, already held in Paris and China, and is planned to be hosted in our winter months, to address Seasonality.  The Western Cape Tourism Marketing Plan is expected to be ready by September.  Inter-provincial travel within the Western Cape will be an important focus.  Mr Flaatten was requested to provide feedback on what Wesgro is doing for the tourism industry as frequently as possible, all media communication to ourselves having been terminated since Wesgro took over.  We fed back that the Tourism Bureaus are not passing on Wesgro’s information to its members, which seemed to surprise him.

Mr Flaatten provided a copy of the latest Tourism Barometer, surprisingly signed off by Calvyn Gilfellan, former CEO of the ex-Cape Town Routes Unlimited. In the last quarter of last year 216000 international tourists arrived in Cape Town, a welcome increase of 15% over the same period a year before.  Domestic arrival growth was far lower in the same period, at 4%, with just under 1 million visitors.  A large part of the report contains statistics of visitor numbers to the province’s key tourism attractions, and to the RTO’s local tourism bureaus, a very unreliable tourism barometer, given that fewer visitors require the information or booking services of tourism bureaus, doing most of their bookings at home via the internet before their departure.

Organisationally, the integration between the ex-Cape Town Routes Unlimited staff is complete, section 197 of the Labour Relations Act having been followed, in that all staff (also the Wesgro staff) were offered staff benefits at the higher level of those offered by Wesgro and Cape Town Routes Unlimited, so that all Wesgro staff now receive the same benefits.  A Memorandum of Understanding, a Memorandum of Agreement, and a budget have been signed by the Joint Working Committee guiding the integration. The Annual Performance Plan of Cape Town Routes Unlimited has been transferred to Wesgro.   For the financial year April 2012/March 2013, Wesgro now has a total budget of just more than R51 million, 45% being for Cape Town Routes Unlimited funding.  All ex-Cape Town Routes Unlimited staff now have Wesgro contracts, e-mail addresses, and business cards.  Staff have been grouped by functionality and accommodated on the 7th and 12th floors of the Waldorf building.  Provincial Tourism Minister Alan Winde’s department is working on repealing the Tourism Act of 2004, which will close down the Board of the ex-Cape Town Routes Unlimited, which currently has to remain operative as long as the current Act is in place.

Wesgro needs to start from the beginning in gaining the confidence of its Western Cape tourism constituency, which had little faith in its predecessor Cape Town Routes Unlimited. The outcome of the 5 July SAA meeting will be a crucial test of its negotiating skills. In addition, it will be judged on its ability to communicate with the tourism industry on a regular basis, via traditional media channels as well as Social Media marketing.

Wesgro, Waldorf Arcade, 80 St George’s Mall, Cape Town.  Tel (021) 487-8600. www.wesgro.co.za Twitter: @Wesgro

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