Chrisa von Ulmenstein | WhaleTales Blog by Chris von Ulmenstein

Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

* Cape Town has a new feather in its cap, having been announced in Vancouver in Canada on Thursday as the WWF Global Earth Hour Capital 2014. Won in competition against 163 cities, including Colorado, Chicago, Cleveland in the USA; Seoul and Suwon in South Korea; Copenhagen; Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo; Antwerp; and Edmonton and Surrey in Canada, the accolade recognises Cape Town’s actions on climate change and its focus on creating a sustainable environment in the city. Cape Town’s reduction of its dependence on fossil fuels by retrofitting the City buildings, improving the energy efficiency of street and traffic lights, the introduction of its solar water heater program, the MyCiTi Bus network, the city centre cycle lanes, and the campaign to save electricity were recognised through the accolade.

* The potentially most crippling strike ever in Germany is the threatened 3 day Lufthansa pilot strike, from 2 – 4 April. which will ground all planes of the airline.

* Europe and the UK turned back the clock to Summer time today, Europe being in the same time zone as South Africa, and the UK Continue reading →

Cape Town has a surplus of hotel beds, mainly at the 5-star level, and it is expected that there will be a major shake-out in this sector after the completion of the World Cup, and “only the fittest will survive”, reports Travel News Now.

Ten new hotels have opened their doors in Cape Town since last year, and include the newest, the Strand Towers, The Pepper Club, Taj Hotel Cape Town (the international monies have been well-spent on this building) , 15 on Orange (which has had money thrown at it by Protea Hotel’s African Pride Hotels), Crystal Towers Hotel, Coral International Cape Town (the first ‘dry’ hotel in the city), One&Only Cape Town (Sol Kerzner is the owner), Cape Royale Luxury Hotel, Harbour Bridge Hotel and Suites, and the Upper East Side Hotel. Four further hotels are in the pipeline for the city.

If the new hotels were the only ones in town, other accommodation establishments would not feel the current accommodation demand decline and room oversupply so badly. But a recent statistic shows that Cape Town currently has 84 hotels with 11 584 rooms in total, compared to the national totals of 596 hotels and 65 872 rooms.

The oversupply of accommodation has led to price-cutting, as the hotels compete to attract declining numbers of visitors to the city. On average, it is said that most accommodation establishments in Cape Town are 50 % full for the World Cup.

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