Tag Archives: e-Marketing

Cape Town faces tough tourism challenges

Cape Town is facing strong tourism competition, and will have to set itself far tougher tourism challenges and to market itself more creatively to be able to meet this competitive challenge, said Cape Town Tourism CEO Mariette du Toit-Helmbold at the tourism member association AGM earlier this week, reports Southern African Tourism Update. 
Innovative marketing, and strong e-marketing and e-commerce platforms are vital to ensure that Cape Town remains an attractive tourist destination, she said.
 
Cape Town Tourism’s new leadership vision for Cape Town for 2020 is to :

” * be recognised as one of the top cities in the world to live, visit, study and invest in
  * double its tourism income
  * use the Fifa World Cup as a springboard to create an economic legacy and unite Capetonians
  * to solve its seasonality problems.”

Marketing investment in public/private partnerships, joint marketing and technology and the Internet are vital, she added
 
Cape Town Tourism’s four priorities are the following:
 
“1) To host a successful Fifa World Cup in 2010: CTT’s actions were aimed at inspiring confidence that Cape Town was ready for the event; excite its citizens with a series of ‘Cape Town: Live it, Love it, Louder!’ campaigns; and inspire ownership of the event. With this in mind, CTT had already launched a Citizens Activation Campaign and a dedicated 2010 website.
2) To realise the long-term promotional legacy of the World Cup: In this regard, CTT developed a dedicated 2010 marketing master plan. Most resources would be spent on in-destination and local marketing initiatives, while focusing on PR and media management in key source markets. A new customer-focused website (www.capetown.travel) and a dedicated 2010 mini website were launched. A Facebook fan page for Cape Town signed up 44 000 members in less than a month from all over the world. CTT also got permission from Fifa for a Cape Town Soccer Brand logo.
3) To position Cape Town as a year-round destination: CTT developed a Cape Town 365 strategy to address seasonality, focusing on events and business tourism.
4) Cape Town at large: This strategy aimed at unlocking the unexplored corners of greater Cape Town to spread the benefits of tourism. CTT, the industry and communities were collaborating to produce a series of new maps, mini guides and information for the website.”
At the AGM the Chairman of Cape Town Tourism, Ian Bartes, raised the issue of the financial independence of Cape Town Tourism, and stated that privatisation could be one way in which the association’s income could be increased, ensuring a reduced dependence on public funding.   The association aims to increase its income from R44 million in 2009 to R66 million by 2013, with a ratio of public to non-public funding of 60:40.  The City of Cape Town’s allocation to the association for the year ending June was R36 million, while Cape Town Tourism itself generated R7 million, less than budgeted.  Cape Town Tourism plans to increase its self-generated revenue to R9 million, and expects the City to increase its allocation to R39 million. 
He said the association’s focus in 2009/10 would be on addressing seasonality in particular:

 “* a commercial business development strategy focusing on retail, use of technology to upgrade the visitor services network, and expansion of a patron partnership programme with the corporate sector.

* Joint marketing agreements with the tourism industry to expand private-sector funding contributions.

* Joint marketing agreements with airlines to stimulate direct travel to Cape Town.
* Greater investment in PR and guest relations.
* Expanding joint marketing plans with Cape Town Routes Unlimited with the focus on 2010, business tourism, major city events, e-business, trade shows and exhibitions.”
 
Three new board members were elected during the AGM.  They are re-elected Chairman Ian Bartes, who is also Manager Service Standards and Quality Assurance at the ACSA (Cape Town). Rashid Toefy, CEO of the Cape Town International Convention Centre,  and Guy Lundy, CEO of Accelerate Cape Town.
Chris von Ulmenstein. Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com

Woolworths Sweet and Google Sour Service Awards

The Sweet Service Award  goes to Woolworths in Regent Road in Sea Point, for trusting a customer with payment for a trolley-full of groceries on the day that Woolworths had a technical problem in accepting payment by credit card.   A small sign, not visible to customers entering the store, stated that the store could only take payment in cash, which meant that most customers arrived at the till with their trollies, wanting to pay with their credit cards.   An imprint was done of the card, and the customer was asked to sign the credit card slip when next in the store, given that she is a regular shopper at the store.

The Sour Service Award goes to Google and its representative in South Africa, New Approach Marketing, based in Johannesburg.  About once a week a heavily British-accented person calls guest houses, starting with the insulting introduction to the effect of: “Hello ma’m, I am calling from Google.  Have you ever heard of our company?”.  This is enough to get one’s back up.   When one questions where they are calling from, the caller gets defensive, especially when one has a caller with such a distinctive British accent claiming to call from Johannesburg.  Any questioning of this has led to a torrent of abuse, including a lady caller, who decided to call back to add to the verbal abuse of her male colleague, by calling the recipient of the call a racist and referring to our countryfolk as “blimming South Africans”!  The call centre staff are rude, and never allow one to finish a sentence, that it would be a surprise if they sold anyone Google adwords.  A more gentle salesperson later in the day explained that New Approach Marketing is representing Google in South Africa, and can get guest houses in Hermanus in the top 10 of Google for searches on “B & B in Hermanus” and similar, in “8 – 12 weeks”, on a “no contract” basis, at the cost of R 1 300 per month + VAT + R 265 set up fee.   He explained the broad Manchester dialect in that 30 of his colleagues have come from the UK to set up a branch of the company in Johannesburg, to train South Africans to take over the call centre eventually, and will move to Perth and to Canada, to set up similar operations there.   As a company was calling on behalf of  S A Tourism a few months ago, the caller was asked if the calls are being done on behalf of S A Tourism – his diplomatic but evasive answer was “not as far as I am aware”.  The content of the call was reported to George, the manager of New Approach Marketing in Johannesburg, and he promised to investigate.   His response was that it must be a competitor company calling directly from the UK, also representing Google, that made the abusive calls!

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.

‘Proudly un-South African’ S A Tourism

It has been confirmed by S A Tourism that it is using an Australian call centre to update the National Tourism Product Database.

In a call to William Price, Global Head of e-Marketing at S A Tourism, he spoke openly and honestly about the problems the tourism marketing company had in finding a South African company that could accurately verify the contact details of tourism products in South Africa.  S A Tourism wants to add the details of all tourism products onto its new website, which it is launching at Indaba in May.

It then appointed Yodel, a call centre company started by South Africans in Australia and New Zealand, who are now setting up a branch office in South Africa.  The call centre company is more efficient and less expensive in offering its service than the South African call centres it had used previously, Price says.

Price had e-mailed “tourism product partners” last month, to state that “South African Tourism and Google have partnered to do a complete clean-up of the National Tourism Product Database.”   The letter did warn one to not “be alarmed by the Aussie accent when you get the phone call.”

Since the letter was sent, product owners have received numerous calls from persons with heavy American and other accents (none from Australia though), claiming to be from South African Tourism in Randburg.   As they struggle badly with some brand names ‘ e.g. ‘Whale Cottage Franschhoek” it is immediately clear that they are not from this country.   Every caller that was asked in which country the call centre was based, put down the phone without answering.   The most recent caller was honest enough to say that it is based in the Philippines!

Price also explained in the call made to him (two e-mails were sent to and a telephonic message left for him, without any response) yesterday that his organisation is looking to assist small product owners who do not have a website.  In conjunction with Google, such product owners will be given a free website and domain for three months, and S A Tourism has set aside a budget of R 500 000 for this.

Vodacom is also looking to offer new product owners connectivity services.

It will be interesting to see what level of success the call centre will have, as the initial reaction one has to someone claiming to call from “S A Tourism in Randburg” with a heavy non-South African accent is one of disbelief.   Even harder is being able to understand the strongly-accented call centre staff, something one normally has a problem with if the calls come from local call centres!