The Sweet Service Award goes to the kind gentleman who came to our rescue when he saw a car guard steal the sunglasses off my head inside my open roof car as we were leaving a parking bay on Alfred Street outside the Old Biscuit Mill’s Neighbourgoods Market last Saturday. We had been harassed by the (non-official) car guard when we arrived, and we did not expect his continued harassment about payment on our return to the car. The passerby saw the theft, and screamed at the car guard until he returned the sunglasses to me! The passerby walked on to his own vehicle, so we were not able to thank him. Continue reading →
Tag Archives: David Green
Mercedes Benz Sweet Service and V&A Waterfront Sour Service Awards!
The Sweet Service Award goes to Mercedes Benz Culemborg, and their car service booking executive Karen, for her excellent service in organising a replacement pair of windscreen wipers immediately, so that I could drive to the workshop to have them fitted within an hour of calling. A loose fitting windscreen wiper arm was tightened when it was found that it was not wiping the windscreen on one side. A strong smell of oil, due to another supplier not closing the oil filter cap properly, was fixed as well, without an extra charge. Karen was previously at the Century City branch, where she gave excellent service too.
The Sour Service Award goes to the V&A Waterfront management, for its lack of response to our Tweets about the poor quality of the new Ladies’ cloakroom which has been moved across the upstairs passage next door to Fabiani. The previous ladies cloakroom has been closed to create a new shop. The new (ex-Gents) cloakroom is one-quarter the size of the previous Ladies’ cloakroom. Transformation into the Ladies’ loos was incomplete, with tiling not finished, the loo door was sticking, not openable from inside, and there was no toilet paper at 19h00 on 10 April, and the cleaner seemed uncertain as to where she could find more. The toilets were very dirty. Angry men were standing in the passage, looking for their cloakroom, nowhere to be seen nor was it signposted. When shared with the V&A, the Marketing head Chantelle Cole responded as follows: ‘Thank you for highlighting this with us and I’m sorry to hear about your unpleasant experience. It’s particularly helpful that you have given us a specific time of the incident; we are investigating this further with the shift manager, to understand why it was in this condition. Our maintenance team had already snagged the issues you highlighted regarding the door sticking and the tiles needing replacement; the tiles were damaged during the conversion and will be replaced at night, when the mall is quieter. As you point out, there are only four cubicles and so we opted to have all four operational, rather than close this one to allow for the repairs. We’re doing a number of exciting changes, including expanding the store space for Superdry and Markhams. To accommodate these extensions, we have had to close one of the toilets. We are building new men and ladies’ toilets near the Post Office, which will be opened in the next few months. We appreciate it has resulted in some inconvenience and we hope our visitors are understanding of this short-term impact. We have prominent signage in place regarding the location of alternate men’s toilets and have signposted the upcoming conversion for the past few weeks in the lead up to this changeover. Thank you again for highlighting this issue and apologies that your tweet was not responded to. This should not have happened and I have discussed this with our social media team, so we don’t have this experience again’.
When replying and asking why the Ladies’ Cloakroom was opened for use whilst substandard and why the signage was so poor, contrary to the V&A’s reply, Ms Cole wrote back, without answering the substandard question, and gave a classic non-Customer Care response to the signage question: ‘Your feedback 
is noted; yours is the only complaint we’ve received on signage and we have tested it with a few people however we will continue to monitor this’ ! A visit to the ladies’ cloakroom last night (2 May), three weeks later, found the toilet cubicles still untiled, and three basins leaking!
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.
V&A Waterfront Sweet Service and Clicks Sour Service Awards!
The Sweet Service Award goes to the V&A Waterfront, and is nominated by Mark Lowe: “I should like to nominate the V&A Waterfront Management for your weekly “Sweet Service Award”. On Friday 18 January I wrote to David Green, CEO of V&A Management, recounting my experience of poor security encountered there when visiting a restaurant at Quay 4 on the night of Thursday 10 January. I am very pleased to report back that on Monday morning, 21 January I received a very comprehensive response from the V&A’s Adri Roux. This was followed up later in the afternoon by a telephone call from “Bobbie” (I neglected to get her surname, although she did give it to me) who also thanked me at length for taking the trouble to contact V&A management, and explained at some length, what further steps they will be taking to address security issues. I was even invited to come down and be taken on an inspection of the facilities and systems that they have in place! I was very impressed with the responses and had all of my expectations exceeded”.
The Sour Service Award goes to Clicks in Glengarriff Road, Sea Point, and is nominated by Mary Nagle: ‘Yesterday I was in Clicks on Glengarriff Road in Sea Point when I noticed an elderly gentleman (I would estimate his age to be close to 90) approach one the employees. This assistant, whose name is Cuba, was wearing a ‘Can I help you?’ sign on his shirt. The customer explained that he needed R100 credit for his cell phone. The assistant merely waved his arm n the direction of the queue – there were 7 people standing there waiting for 2 assistants. I thought it was extremely poor form, given that it was obvious that the customer would not be able to stand in a queue for that length of time, that the assistant didn’t immediately sort out a chair for the gentleman and organise his airtime for him. I wonder about the training provided by Clicks, as it was evident from Cuba’s reaction, that “the minimum is good enough”. I have telephoned to Clicks Head Office this morning to explain to the CEO David Kneale what has happened. I left a voice message and will let you know if I get a response’. Mary let us know subsequently that she heard from the Clicks Head Office.
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.
December Cape Town tourism performance information contradictory!
Tourist attractions in Cape Town reported an increase in visitors during December, but Cape Town International airport bucked the trend, announcing a reduction in passenger arrivals in December 2012 relative to December 2011.
Cape Town International saw a 10% decline in passenger arrivals, which the Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry has blamed on SAA cutting its London – Cape Town route. The Chamber has been known to make incorrect statements relating to the tourism industry in the past, especially in the term of its previous President Michael Bagraim, not appearing to have a good grasp on the Cape tourism industry. We have not had any feedback from tourists complaining about not being able to get to Cape Town, given that BA and Virgin fly direct from London to Cape Town, and a number of other direct flight options as well as those via Johannesburg are available to tourists at varying prices. A report by the Cape Times quotes Airports Company South Africa Deirdre Davids as saying that passenger arrivals increased by 7% in December 2012, and that international arrivals increased by 17%, but it does not state which period the increases are relative to.
Quick to jump on the tourism bandwagon, but not always knowledgeable about the industry he is meant to represent on the City of Cape Town’s Mayoral Committee, is Councillor Grant Pascoe, who issued a media release in December about the City’s November tourism performance, adding up the visitor numbers for the Big Six City tourist attractions, and coming up with a figure of ‘over 2 million people’, without taking duplication of attraction visits into account! The media release comes from the City of Cape Town’s ‘Integrated Strategic Communication and Branding Department’, but does not have an author, its poor writing comparing with the poor media releases generated by Cape Town Tourism!
The media release reported the following visitor numbers in November 2012:
* V&A Waterfront: ‘over’ 1,8 million
* Table Mountain (Cableway, one assumes that this is the measured entity, but it is not specified by Pascoe): ‘just over’ 90000
* Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens: 70745
* Cape Point: 37600
* Robben Island: 31870
* Groot Constantia: ‘over‘ 20000
The Cableway reported that it had achieved its best ever ticket sales of 119000 in December 2012 (it ran a price reduction promotion for locals to thank them for voting Table Mountain as a New7Wonders of Nature at the beginning of December!), and on Boxing Day 7500 visitors went up the mountain, its best day of the month. Similarly Kirstenbosch increased its numbers, at 82000. Robben Island ticket sales have been on a downward trend since 2010. The V&A Waterfront claimed to have received 3 million ‘visitors’ in December 2012, reported Business Day, an increase of 10% on December 2011, claimed the V&A Waterfront CEO David Green. This implies a 67% increase relative to November 2012! One wonders how the Waterfront measures the ‘visitor numbers’, and what percentage of these are in fact Capetonians shopping there, and going to the movies or eating out, as we have written before. The V&A used to have a counter on the road at its entrance, but it is not visible any more. This could make the V&A figures misleading as far as its tourism visitorship is concerned!
If Cape Town International is reporting a 10 % decline for December, and the local tourist attractions reported an increase in visitor numbers, it means that the Cape had more local (Western Cape) visitors to Cape Town, and South Africans who drove instead of flying to Cape Town, possibly due to excessive airline prices, even for domestic flights, and car rental costs.
Once again Cape Town Tourism CEO Mariette du Toit-Helmbold referred to Seasonality, paying lip service to fixing the problem, as she does year after year: ‘We need to work really hard and continue the effort to promote Cape Town as a year-round destination and encourage visitors to travel out of the peak season so we can extent (sic) our season all year round‘, reported EWN! Interesting is that Cape Town Tourism admitted that Cape Town could not cope with the tourism numbers over the Festive Season, with rental cars sold out, limited parking, and increased traffic, said its PR and Communications Manager Skye Grove, according to a report in the Cape Argus, a predictable problem, but one which Cape Town Tourism did nothing about, all its top management having been on holiday over this period!
The publicity surrounding the December tourism performance is interesting, as the month has a summer seasonality component, as we are seeing for each of the summer months, with the exception of February. So, for example December had two very poor weeks in the first half, and Cape Town only filled up just after Christmas, therefore containing only a small Festive Season tourism component. Our Whale Cottage Camps Bay occupancy figures show that the December 2012 occupancy of 61% fell from the 70% in December 2011, and is still far below the record occupancy of over 84 % and higher in 2009, 2008, and 2007! Pascoe’s claim that ‘the City’s tourism industry has been enjoying a steady annual increase in visitor numbers’ is misleading and factually incorrect!
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter: @WhaleCottage