Cape Town Tourism has launched three new neighborhood videos ‘hosted’ by Cape Town personalities, as tools to market our beautiful city!
The three videos, collectively referred to as ‘Love Cape Town Neighbourhood Series’, focus on the CBD, Woodstock, and Kalk Bay, and are designed to give visitors to Cape Continue reading →
Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines
* Transit passengers, traveling with children through our country’s airports to other destinations, will not require supporting documentation such as unabridged birth certificates, to the relief of our neighboring countries.
* The success of the Franschhoek Literary Festival has given it coverage in the New York Times, with an article focusing on the controversial nature of some of the sessions, especially the one at which Bongani Madondo spoke. The biographer of Continue reading →
Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlinese
* A bid for Cape Town to host a Grand Prix next year will be submitted by Cape Town Grand Prix SA to Motorsport South Africa tomorrow. It is planned to be hosted in Green Point and at the Cape Town Stadium. The costs involved are in the region of R750 million.
* Nando’s is using its international outlets to attract attention to top South African design, including Vogel riempie chairs, and tables by Egg Designs. Pedersen + Lennard and Design Afrika have been commissioned too. Nando’s designer Tracy Lee Lynch said about the project: ‘We’re implementing the project slowly and realistically. We’ll start with 20 pieces by 10 designers that will be used by the Nando’s interiors teams across the world. Customers in places such as Canada and the UK will see the best of our local talent‘. The company’s head office Continue reading →
On Friday The Guardian published a very lengthy article about Cape Town’s role as host of World Design Capital 2014 (WDC), and highlighted the unusual locations of design gems in Cape Town, including the townships and previously run-down city areas, as opposed to art galleries. Unfortunately this is the second international article about Cape Town in two days with errors! The article highlights what a visitor to Cape Town should see during this design-centred year, and contains shocking news for the Tourism industry.
Journalist Lisa Grainger anticipated visiting upmarket galleries, style emporiums, and seeing craft art, but instead she spent most of her week in Cape Town in townships with guide Fernie, to experience real creativity born from poverty. ‘Because it is in these townships that some of the most inspiring people live: people who are incredible, positive, engaging, brave. And I want visitors to see the good there is here, the real heart of South Africa’, he explained to her.
She was told by Priscilla Urquhart, PR and Media Manager of Cape Town Design NPC, the company responsible for implementing World Design Capital 2014 for Cape Town, that our city’s budget (supplied by the City of Cape Town) is R 40 million, compared to close to R60 million spent by Helsinki two years ago, when that city carried the honour. Budget constraints prevented the creation of City-led design projects in Cape Town, but allowed the city’s design industry to offer its design projects for consideration, and about 450 have become official World Design Capital 2014 projects, summarised in a fold-open brochure. There is no showcase for these projects, the Design Indaba and Guild design fair having been the only two exhibitions where some of the work linked to some of the projects could be seen, unfortunately having run concurrently at the very busy end of February.
A shock is reading Urquhart admit to the journalist that ‘the WDC programme wasn’t designed to attract tourists, but to try to Continue reading →