Tag Archives: Cape Town Design NPC

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

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*   South Africa only has one visa official in India, in Mumbai, to process visa applications for travel to South Africa.  The backlog is as large as 850 applications, taking about a month for a visa to be processed.  The travel and tour operator industry is saying that the situations is causing a very damaging image for South Africa, and that business could be lost to other countries!

*   Sean Penn was sighted in the pedestrian Dias Tavern in Cape Town yesterday.  Making media mileage of the sighting was Cape Town Design NPC CEO Alayne Reesberg, managing World Design Capital 2014.  Reesberg  is reported to have said that Penn is charming, having waved back at her when she waved at him, when lunching at the same restaurant!  Last week Penn and Charlize Theron were seen at the Augrabies Falls.  Penn is said to be in Cape Town to look for locations for a new movie.

*   Bo-Kaap featured in the New York Times yesterday, with the headline ‘In Cape Town, Local Color comes in Bright Shades’,  mentioning Luvey ‘n Rose, Atlas Trading Company, Bo-Kaap Food and Craft Market, and Agua Dreamz. Continue reading →

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 9 April

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 9 April

*   Former footballer David Beckham is endorsing new Haig Club single grain Scotch whisky, in a partnership with Diageo,  packaged in an unusual bottle resembling aftershave rather than an alcoholic beverage!

*   In the past year ‘Bargain Brits‘ bought 80% of their wines in UK supermarkets at under £6 (just over R100) per bottle!  Supermarket wars, which reduce prices of wines, are blamed for this purchase pattern.

*   The Roca brothers, who own El Celler de Can Roca, the top World’s 50 Best Restaurant in Girona in Spain, will be pairing their food with single malt Scotch whisky The Macallan, one of them being 67 years old.  Six $10000 per head dinners, in aid of charity, will be held in June and July.

*  Eco-tourism is reversing the trend of young people leaving rural areas to find jobs in the bigger towns and cities.   The Continue reading →

World Design Capital 2014 & New7Wonders of Nature: have Cape Town ratepayers been conned?

Cape Town StadiumIn the Cape Times on Tuesday Glenn Babb, a former Director General of Foreign Affairs, and a commissioner for our country at the Venice Biennale in 1993 and 1995, wrote a lengthy article about the City of Cape Town having paid millions of Rands to support two money-making organisations handing out accolades to those cities prepared to pay for them, and which most had not been heard of previously.  The City had justified the expenditures, funded by means of ratepayers’ monies, on the basis of the tourism benefits these accolades would hold for Cape Town.

Bitingly entitled ‘Cape Town’s Devious Designs’, Babb focused on Table Mountain becoming one of the New7Wonders of Nature.  He writes that the Swiss-based company New7Wonders of Nature Foundation, which drove the campaign, makes its money from the sms-revenue generated when the citizens of cities are encouraged to vote to get one’s landmark onto the top seven list.  The company claimed that it had received 100 million votes, each of which had generated income for the company. The City of Cape Town had spent extensive monies on advertising to support the campaign to get Capetonians to vote. Continue reading →

World Design Capital 2014: Highlights design in Cape Town Townships, no Tourism benefit sought!

Cécile and Boyd FoundationOn Friday The Guardian published a very lengthy article about Cape Town’s role as host of World Design Capital 2014 (WDC), and highlighted the unusual locations of design gems in Cape Town, including the townships and previously run-down city areas, as opposed to art galleries.  Unfortunately this is the second international article about Cape Town in two days with errors!  The article highlights what a visitor to Cape Town should see during this design-centred year, and contains shocking news for the Tourism industry.

Journalist Lisa Grainger anticipated visiting upmarket galleries, style emporiums, and seeing craft art, but instead she spent most of her week in Cape Town in townships with guide Fernie, to experience real creativity born from poverty. ‘Because it is in these townships that some of the most inspiring people live: people who are incredible, positive, engaging, brave. And I want visitors to see the good there is here, the real heart of South Africa’, he explained to her.  

She was told by Priscilla Urquhart, PR and Media Manager of Cape Town Design NPC, the company responsible for implementing World Design Capital 2014 for Cape Town, that our city’s budget (supplied by the City of Cape Town) is R 40 million, compared to close to R60 million spent by Helsinki two years ago, when that city carried the honour. Budget constraints prevented the creation of City-led design projects in Cape Town, but allowed the city’s design industry to offer its design projects for consideration, and about 450 have become official World Design Capital 2014 projects, summarised in a fold-open brochure. There is no showcase for these projects, the Design Indaba and Guild design fair having been the only two exhibitions where some of the work linked to some of the projects could be seen, unfortunately having run concurrently at the very busy end of February.

A shock is reading Urquhart admit to the journalist that ‘the WDC programme wasn’t designed to attract tourists, but to try to Continue reading →