Tag Archives: Cape Town Stadium

Big Concerts Sweet Service and MyCiti Bus Sour Service Awards!

The Sweet Service Award goes to Big Concerts for its smooth handling of the Bon Jovi and Justin Bieber concerts on Tuesday and Wednesday this week, which saw about 55000 excited Bon Jovi and ‘Bieber Fever’ fans (with their poor parents) filling the Cape Town Stadium on each of the two evenings.  For the Bieber concert, special care was taken for the young ticket holders, information desks having been set up, as were cellphone charging points, to enable them to remain in contact with their friends, and with their parents waiting for them outside. Kfm also provided tips to their young listeners, advising them to not bring umbrellas (regarded as weapons of mass destruction), to be warmly dressed, and to have contact details of their parents on them. Bieber’s 39 million Twitter followers were exposed to brand name ‘Cape Town’ four times during his stay in our city, a massive free marketing bonus! If only the traffic in the city centre and the V&A Waterfront could have been managed by them too! The traffic police were visible close to the Stadium and in Green Point, ticketing to avoid illegal parking, leaving the city and the V&A jammed up with traffic!

The Sour Service Award goes to the MyCiti Bus service, for not operating its bus service during the national Golden Arrow bus strike running over more than two weeks. Whilst the City of Cape Town announced the temporary termination of the bus service due to the threatened damage to the buses by strikers, it would appear that the City’s drivers are not driving as they too are striking, being ex-minibus and Golden Arrow bus drivers!  How frustrating it must be for visitors to Cape Town, having planned to use the bus service from the airport and enticed to do so with advertisements inside and outside the airport building, to not be able to do so!  Furthermore, the non-operation of the MyCiTi buses caused further traffic mayhem in the city on the two concert nights this week, as all concertgoers had to drive to the Stadium by car.

The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog.  Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at info@whalecottage.com.   Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog, and in the WhaleTales newsletters on the www.whalecottage.com website.

Cape Town and Western Cape enjoy an egg-cellent Easter weekend!

It was less an Easter weekend breakaway, and more the Two Oceans Marathon, that filled up Cape Town in particular this weekend, an astounding 28000 runners from Cape Town, other parts of the country, and other countries participating in the Half and Full Marathon yesterday. It is probably one of the last busy tourism weekends for a few months, as the end of the Easter weekend signals the end of the tourist summer season.

A media statement received from Western Cape Tourism Minister Alan Winde estimates the contribution of The Old Mutual Two Oceans Marathon at R80 million.  It is a shame that the Easter weekend appears to co-incide with extreme weather conditions, the gale force South Easter blowing in excess of 100 km/hour yesterday, being a challenge for many runners, as was the torrential rain a year ago.

This weekend saw the start of another large event, taking place in Oudtshoorn, being the ABSA Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees (KKNK), running for a week.  The Minister’s estimate of the economic contribution of the KKNK is R95 million.

Other events this weekend were a soccer match between Ajax Cape Town and AmaZulu at the Cape Town Stadium (but poorly advertised), and the Raka unplugged music festival in Swellendam from tomorrow until 3 April.  World-renowned Shanghai-born and New York-based Tian Jiang pianist performed at a well-attended charity performance in Franschhoek, organised by La Residence for the Lelieblom House for Children and the Stuart Andrew McFarlane Foundation for Motor Neuron Disease, and attracting visitors from Johannesburg and London.

Events certainly attract tourists to Cape Town.  It is a shame when they co-incide, and one hopes that the province and Wesgro, with the City of Cape Town, have many plans for events during the Seasonality problem-child period of May until September!

We wish all our guests, staff, suppliers and blog readers a Happy Easter.

Photograph: Orphanage Cocktail Emporium’s Hot Cross Bunny Cocktail, created in celebration of its first anniversary yesterday!

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

City of Cape Town’s T.E.A.M. is ‘keyholder that can unlock tourism to Cape Town’!

Yesterday afternoon Anton Groenewald, Executive Director of the City of Cape Town’s new TEAM (Tourism, Events, Arts, Marketing) Directorate, addressed the French networking group CAP40 at the Alliance Française on the topic ‘Perspective on strategic and policy intiatives to grow the Tourism business in Cape Town‘.  He was described as the ‘keyholder that can unlock tourism to the Cape’. Groenewald has become the most powerful person in Tourism in Cape Town, and has a considerable budget.

Groenewald is an interesting man, very honest (often at his own expense) and direct, very goal-orientated, non-political in his actions, and charming even though he may be ruthlessly honest.  He is not always ‘media-correct’ in his honesty, yet he does not seem to mind being quoted, no matter how sensitive his response may be to the parties he may be commenting about, as we discovered last year when Cape Town Tourism was blowing its own horn about the number of Twitter impressions it had created by inviting four international bloggers to the city. For Groenewald it is all about the bottom line, his mantra being ‘commercialisation’ to achieve revenue targets. His department has promised Cape Town Tourism R117 million for the three year period from 1 July 2013 onwards, but with demanding revenue and commercialisation targets to be achieved. He certainly means business, and was honest in admitting that a head of Cape Town Tourism who has been in the position for nine years no longer is fresh enough to be on top of her game.  He confirmed that its outgoing-CEO Mariette du Toit-Helmbold did not need any encouragement to not renew her contract.  They will shortly start recruiting a replacement CEO nationally as well as internationally.  His no-nonsense attitude shows when he stopped Cape Town Tourism PR Continue reading →

Cape Town set to rock, juggle, and laugh this year!

An exciting line up of shows is planned for Cape Town in the next few days and months, according to the Weekend Argus, and could be good for the City’s tourism coffers, as we experienced with the Red Hot Chilli Peppers last week, visitors having flown in from Johannesburg and other parts of the country to attend the concert.

On the programme for this year to date are the following shows:

*   Rodriguez performs at another two concerts this week, at Grand West (‘Search fro Sugar Man’ awarded a BAFTA for Best Documentary last night)

*   Cirque du Soleil‘s new show ‘Dralion’ will run over five days at Grand West from 5 March.

*   Internationally acclaimed Chinese pianist Tian Jiang is doing a charity performance at the Franschhoek Dutch Reformed Church on 29 March for La Residence Hotel and Villas, in aid of Lelieblom House for Children and the Stuart Andrew McFarlane Foundation for Motor Neuron Disease. Tickets cost R325, and include canapés and bubbly. Tel (021) 876-4100 (Chantell)

*   Metallica performs at the Cape Town Stadium on 24 April

*   Bon Jovi plays at Cape Town Stadium on 7 May

*   The Justin Bieber show at Cape Town Stadium on 8 May is already sold out.

*   John Cleese will do stand-up comedy in June, at a venue to be advised.

Big Concerts has not confirmed speculation that Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Fleetwood Mac, and Mumford & Sons will be performing in Cape Town later this year.  Big Concerts pushes Cape Town as a concert destination, said its CEO John Langford: ‘Cape Town is a great destination for live entertainment of all forms, and we are certain that it will continue to play a major role in all future international tours‘.

Given the huge tourist attraction concerts generate for Cape Town, Big Concerts in conjunction with Cape Town Tourism should consider ticket/accommodation/restaurant packages for big acts performing in our city.

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