Tag Archives: Cable car

German ZDF TV ‘Das Traumschiff’ episode ‘Kapstadt’ is good and bad PR for Cape Town!

 

I looooove ‘Das Traumschiff’, a German TV series that has been broadcast regularly in the past 20 years or so, so I was doubly excited when our city  ‘Kapstadt’ was the focus of the Boxing Day 2020 edition of  this series.

The edition could not have come at a better time, when our city’s Tourism industry is sorely missing its German tourists, and the Germans are missing not being able to travel to our city. But a subplot of the Cape Town edition has some political sensitivities, not good for our country’s image and tourism future. Continue reading →

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 10 February

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*   Decanter included three South African wines in its 2013 top 50 wines, out of a total of 3200 wines evaluated. Alheit Vineyards’ Cartology 2011 was ranked 4th; Vuurberg White 2011 was ranked 36th; and Adoro Red 2006 was ranked 37th.

*   Given that the week of romance is upon us, the top five most romantic beaches of South Africa have been named, Clifton making first place, followed by Umhlanga Rocks, Noetzie in Knysna, Margate, and Noup in the Northern Cape.

*   About 10% of tourists arriving in South Africa come to participate or watch a sports event.  Now a new sport called Bossaball, a combination of soccer, volleyball, gymnastics, and an Afro-Brazilian martial arts form capoeira, is to be introduced to our country by Zinto Sports.

*   The Cape Town Art Fair 2014 will be held at The Pavilion in the V&A Waterfront from 28 February – 2 March.  The entrance fee of R120 also entitles entrance to ‘GUILD’, an exhibition of Design, held at The Lookout, also in the V&A. Both exhibitions form part of Cape Town hosting World Design Capital 2014.

*   Allan Mullins has been appointed as ‘chief wine selector’ by Africa Wine Merchants, Continue reading →

Table Mountain hits tourism peak!

The Table Mountain Aerial Cableway Company has achieved its best ever December, with a record 116000 visitors going up Table Mountain in the cable car, up by 65% compared to December 2010.  Visitors were mainly South Africans.

The previous visitor peak was achieved in December 2006, when 112000 visitors went up Table Mountain by cable car, reports ioltravel.  A year ago the company had one of its worst performances, at 70000 visitors, being severely hampered by closures due to strong Southeaster winds.  In December, the Cableway could operate 72 % of the time, compared to only 56% the December a year before, the Cableway operation being heavily weather-dependent, and having to close when windspeeds go above a safe level of operation.  The Cableway company has also introduced an online ticket sale  service, to reduce the long queues which have been common during the summer seasons.

The Cableway opened 82 years ago, and took 6000 visitors up the mountain in December 1929.

Table Mountain has been named a New7Wonders of Nature, a provisional accolade still subject to verification.   Table Mountain Aerial Cableway Company CEO Sabine Lehmann said: “Table Mountain’s campaign to be included in the New7Wonders of Natures has raised awareness of our natural icon, and it seemed that many South Africans wanted to see the icon for themselves”.

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

World Cup puts South Africa into focus, some bad, mostly good!

The World Cup has always been said to have the benefit of showcasing South Africa, and the world’s media are descending on the country to prepare profiles of South Africa.  Some of it is negative, but much so far has been positive, especially in showing off the beauty of Cape Town.

A South Africa-based correspondent for SkyNEWS seems to be in the townships every day, negatively reporting about the poverty of these residents, while the ‘rich’ sector of the country benefits from the World Cup, it is highlighted continuously.

Much more positive reporting is coming from ZDF, Germany’s largest TV station, which is pulling out all the stops to showcase South Africa.  Yesterday, for example, the station did a 24 hour broadcast on its online channel, about our country, a conglomeration of various documentaries the station had produced on previous occasions.  Unfortunately an on-line broadcast is not as powerful as a television broadcast, but it will have attracted a young audience.   ZDF put a lot of advertising muscle behind the 24-hour broadcast, so it created strong awareness amongst ZDF viewers.   The country brand ‘Suedafrika’ is definitely top of mind. 

However, 90 minutes of the on-line broadcast was broadcast on ZDF TV throughout the day, in three sets of 30 minutes each.   The programme started with beautiful shots of Table Mountain, and then of Cape Town filmed from Table Mountain.   It was said that a trip up the mountain by cable car is a must for every visitor.   Then the documentary jumped in contrast to a school in Wuppertal, showing children in a boarding school having to brush their teeth in an irrigation canal, because there are not enough facilities in the hostel for all the children.  Then it moved to showing burning tyres, set alight by taxi drivers protesting against the new BRT bus system to be introduced.   A township resident was interviewed, who positively stated that he would never leave his township : ‘I do not want to change my life for anything’, despite the poor facilities in the township.   Children receiving a swimming lesson in Khayelitsha were filmed, and a sangoma throwing the bones interviewed.   Then the production team interviewed Pieter-Dirk Uys, who initially spoke in German, but switched to English when he spoke about how dangerous it was for him to have mocked the Government when he first started, and melodramatically stated that had he been black, he would have been imprisoned!  (He did not tell the interviewer that he has declared Evita se Perron in Darling soccer-free during the World Cup!).

Then the action moved to Captain Crash, who chases after stolen cars and minibus taxis in his helicopter (I have seen this insert twice already), and then to a Soweto-based Event Manager Tshepiso Mohlala, who is involved in the organisation of the World Cup Concert on 10 June.   A lot of airtime was given to a German wedding co-ordinator from Wedding Concepts, who was organising a wedding at Allee Bleue outside Franschhoek.

Capetonian and ex-Miss South Jo-Ann Strauss features regularly in a ZDF TV advert for the World Cup Concert, from which Strauss and revered ZDF talk-show host Thomas Gottschalk will be presenting for ZDF.  She speaks near-perfect German, her partner being from Munich, saying: ‘Suedafrika begruesst die Fussballwelt’ (South Africa welcomes the football nations).

Other programmes, like ‘Traumstaedte’ (Dream Cities), start off positively, with beautiful views of Camps Bay beach, the Promenade, the Bay Hotel, the Waterfront, but soon move to the townships, and interviews are conducted with extremely negative residents, talking about the crime and drug situation in the townships.   The ZDF reporters talk about Cape Town’s ‘Hell and Paradise’ not the lasting impression we would like to create marketing-wise amongst international viewers.

‘Traumflug durch Afrika: Von Kapstadt nach Kenia’ (Dream flight through Africa: from Cape Town to Kenya) was far more positive, documenting a Eurocopter pilot flying over beautiful Cape Town (Table Mountain and Cape Point), flying 3 meters above the sea, the Garden Route to George and Knysna for some golf and oysters at the Dry Dock restaurant, to the Addo Park for a safari, to St Francis, Coffee Bay, the Hole in the Wall, and then off to Lesotho, reaching his end destination of Kenya. 

In a cooking program with some of Germany’s top chefs, the cooking stars all wore German soccer jerseys, to show their pride in and support for the German team, indirectly attracting attention to the World Cup.

Given that Cape Town Tourism has appointed PR companies in Germany and the U K, and in other European countries, we trust that the city’s tourism body will help influence the content of documentaries of our city, and that they show the tourist side of Cape Town, without having to focus so much on the townships.

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