The Sweet Service Award goes to Snuffels second-hand furniture shop in Hermanus, for its prompt collection on the same day when called by my very efficient former Guest House Manager Carole Cessano, of furniture which was still in my house in Hermanus, and for depositing some pocket money into my bank account the following day. Continue reading →
It was Futurist Faith Popcorn who predicted a trend of ‘Recareering’ back in the ‘Seventies, one having multiple careers in a lifetime, at a time when I myself was in my first career as a Futurist. I could not have foreseen that my career path from Futurist to Market Researcher, Marketing Lecturer, Research Consultant, Food PR Consultant, and then Guest House owner for the last 19 years would lead me to my new and seventh career, to that as a Continue reading →
The Sweet Service Award goes to Incredible Connection in the Cape Town city centre, and its salesperson Fabien, who was very helpful in selling a new Acer mini-laptop, and cleaning it proactively to remove all finger marks on it, as I had told him that the laptop was a present for our colleague Carole Cessano, Manager of our Whale Cottage Hermanus. He made a plan to get a blue coloured laptop, to match our Whale Cottage corporate colour. The present was a huge joy to Carole, her first laptop, allowing her to easily transport her new computer between her home and our guest house.
The Sour Service Award goes to Multichoice, for its abominable call centre service. A recent requirement to upgrade one’s smart card created a problem for our Hermanus guest house, as physical collection of the card from their Cape Town service centre would have left the guest house without the Multichoice channels until a next visit. I was advised to get my staff to collect the smart card from Neil du Toit General Dealer, the Hermanus agents for Multichoice. One would have thought that some communication would have taken place between Multichoice and the retailer, to send the signal once the Premier Smart Card had been collected, but this clearly was asking too much. We called Multichoice, explaining the background, and asking them to send the appropriate signal for the new card, speaking to Nellie and then her supervisor Harriet. We Tweeted about the poor service received, and the @DSTV Tweeter asked for an explanation of the problem – in 140 characters this was impossible, so we provided our telephone number for them to call. It took at least an hour for Katleto Motingwa to call back. He must have looked up the call report from the night before first, as he was exceedingly defensive and rude from the start, and seemed to know all about my query before giving me a chance to explain what I needed. He told me that he was in the Complaints department, but he had no understanding of what I was requesting. I asked him to get his manager to call, which he did, and unfortunately I did not take his name. This gentleman was fantastic, understood my simple request immediately, had the new signal sent, and followed up telephonically thereafter to check if all was in order, although he called a few hours later instead of the promised ten minutes. The Multichoice staff are arrogant and rude. One wonders why Multichoice employs technically unqualified persons in its call centre!
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.
Today we celebrate the opening in Hermanus of the first Whale Cottage 14 years ago. Having an all-women team of staff, it is even more special that our anniversary co-incides with Women’s Day today – I salute my ladies, and thank them for all they do for our guests. Whale Cottage Hermanus has been heavily booked for the long weekend, and all Whale Cottage guests have been served sparkling wine with their breakfast this weekend, to celebrate our milestone.
Filled with nostalgia, I look back at the early days of running our Whale Cottage Hermanus, then located on Main Road – a great location initially in terms of visibility (we had a blue-and-white striped roof in those days, similar to our Whale Cottage Franschhoek). Our inspiration for the name came from the Victorian cottage in which we set up our first Whale Cottage in 1996, and in honour of the Southern Right whales that became so popular, and put Hermanus on the map, in offering the best land-based whale watching in the world.
There was no internet in our world of guest housing in those days, and we all only advertised in Portfolio’s Bed & Breakfast Collection, which cost us around R 12000 for a third of a page in those days. We all hated Portfolio, largely due to its dictatorial and unapproachable owner Liz Westby-Nunn. Their power was tremendous, as they introduced the first attempt at “grading” our establishments, giving them a yellow, purple or red shield, implying different levels of luxury. The annual visits for their inspections filled us with fear, and we were not allowed to question their instructions as to what had to be changed. One dared not speak against the company (even though we were paying advertisers) nor argue their directives, and we parted ways with Portfolio when their greed extended to charging commission for bookings on their website, in addition to the ever-increasing cost of their advertisements.
The internet opened up to us at the same time, and it was a huge relief to see how well we did advertising on the accommodation websites SA Venues and Cape Stay, and the former still holds. Networking with fellow guest house owners became an important source of business, especially in Camps Bay, where we run the Camps Bay Accommodation Association, and we pass all overflow enquiries to our 24 members. We also share industry information with each other.
After we opened the seafacing Whale Cottage Camps Bay in 1998, we received feedback from our guests that they were missing a seaview in Hermanus, so we set upon the search for a new property to be set up as a guest house, with a seaview. We found such a property on Westcliff Drive, on the way to the new Harbour, with a magnificent view of Walker Bay, and opened it in 2002, selling the Main Road property. Barry Lewis was our long-standing manager, and we are delighted that we have his sister Carole Cessano working with us now, with the faithful Juliette at her side.
From June – December the whales attract visitors to Hermanus, who have not found a place in the world where they can see whales as they can do from the well-developed cliff path, running from the new Harbour to beyond Voelklip, all along the ocean. But Hermanus has wonderful beaches too, that are warmer than those on the Atlantic Ocean of Cape Town, and also has outstanding wine farms in the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley area, including Hamilton Russell Vineyards, Bouchard Finlayson, Creation, Hermanuspietersfontein, and more.
Whale Cottage Franschhoek opened five years ago, and Whale Cottage Plettenberg Bay two and a half years ago. With Whale Cottage Hermanus and Whale Cottage Camps Bay, they make up the unique Whale Cottage Portfolio, welcoming our guests to “a whale of a stay!”. One of its unique features is the Whale Cottage Loyalty Card, which was introduced from the start in 1996, offering our Whale Cottage guests one night free for every 10 nights that they stay at a Whale Cottage, and this has become a very popular incentive to return to our Whale Cottages. Nine years ago we introduced our WhaleTales newsletter, which is sent to our Address Book of 25000 every 6 weeks or so, and is written as a tourism newsletter, described by many as the only newsletter which summarises what is happening in the tourism and hospitality industry. We have never been afraid of being controversial, and of writing the truth. This policy of independent tourism reporting is also the foundation of this WhaleTales Blog.
We thank our Whale Cottage guests, suppliers, colleagues and friends for their loyal support of our guest houses, and of our WhaleTales newsletters and Blog.
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com