Directorate | WhaleTales Blog by Chris von Ulmenstein

The media release issued by the City of Cape Town last week appeared like a PR exercise to make its Tourism, Events, and Marketing Directorate look good after the sudden departure of the Directorate’s Grant Pascoe, former Mayoral Committee member for Tourism, Events, and Marketing. The Directorate was blamed by Mayor Patricia de Lille for not performing well under Pascoe’s leadership.

Odd too was that the media release was issued by the City of Cape Town, and not by Cape Town Tourism, which has a PR agency, and usually is the spokesperson for the tourism industry in Cape Town. Whilst quoting Cape Town Tourism CEO Enver Duminy towards the end of the release, its main spokesperson in the release was Anton Groenewald, the Tourism Directorate’s Executive Director, who has never been quoted in a media release before, all communication expressed by Pascoe in the past, even in Cape Town Tourism releases at one stage! In releasing the statement via the City, the Cape Town Tourism media list did not receive the media statement. We requested a copy from Groenewald, but have not received it yet, almost a week later!

If the City of Cape Town and Cape Town Tourism had the tourism statistics relating to the period ending February 2014, one wonders why they waited four weeks to release the results, and why they were released the day after Pascoe’s departure! Ironic is the Continue reading →

City of Cape Town Councillor for Tourism, Events, and Marketing, Grant Pascoe, has a lot of image polishing to do after he and his Tourism, Events, and Marketing Directorate were in the dog box, having to undergo an embarrassing forensic audit recently. It is annoying to read his misleading optimistic view of the Festive Season, clearly without substantiation. The same applies to a media release from Cape Town Tourism, making projections based on poor market research techniques.

The Councillor brags in an article in the City of Cape Town’s weekly newsletter, just two days after the Cape Town Tourism media release was dispatched, that Cape Town ‘is gearing up for a bumper festive season‘, undefined and unsubstantiated, adding that the City plans to position itself as the ‘Events Capital of Africa’, a surprise given that no events have been created since the Councillor established his Directorate headed by Anton Groenewald. In fact the Directorate, with an annual budget of R500 million, has not shown any sign of tourism marketing action, other than laying on some small scale soccer matches at the Cape Town Stadium, a sport which Pascoe personally is particularly fond of! Groenewald ironically was quoted recently in saying that Cape Town has lost out on a number of events due Continue reading →