Tag Archives: EDP

Marketing Cape Town and Western Cape: get out of ‘silos’, urges Andrew Boraine!

PRISA Andrew Boraine Whale CottageWestern Cape Economic Development Partnership (EDP) CEO Andrew Boraine addressed The Institute for Public Relations & Communication Management Western Cape at its AGM at the Bantry Bay Hotel last night, talking about communication and its impact on the economic development of Cape Town and the Western Cape.

Boraine shed light on an interesting topic before load shedding hit the Atlantic Continue reading →

Western Cape EDP to unite ‘divided tourism industry’!

An announcement that the tourism industry has been waiting for a long time, that was made via Southern African Tourism Update three days ago, is welcome news. The Western Cape Minister of Tourism Alan Winde has announced that the Economic Development Partnership (EDP), launched in Cape Town a week ago, will focus on the unification of the ‘divided tourism industry‘ as its first task!

Minister Winde said that the EDP should bring together the tourism industry, currently divided amongst political and municipal boundaries. He said that the successful unification of the tourism industry would be ‘one of the first wins of the EDP’.   No further detail is provided as to what exactly is intended for the tourism industry, already shocked at the Minister’s decision to incorporate the now defunct Cape Town Routes Unlimited into Wesgro, a trade and investment agency that has no tourism experience or track record.  When we questioned Wesgro CEO Nils Flaatten about the EDP and its role relative to his organisation, he claimed to not know anything about the EDP, and referred us to the Western Cape Director of Economic Development and Tourism Solly Fourie.

More important than the unification of the individual tourism organisations throughout the province, is the need to address the duplication between the work done by Cape Town Tourism and the tourism arm of Wesgro.  At its recent Marketing presentation, Cape Town Tourism presented its National Geographic campaign shared with Durban Tourism, doing expensive international marketing via the magazine and TV channel in a potential tourism market such as China, and in India, work which should be done by the tourism arm of Wesgro, but ideally by SA Tourism, having a most effectively run office in that country, and a far larger marketing budget.

The EDP was launched at the Cape Town Film Studios outside Cape Town a week ago, intended as ‘an innovative body based on world best practice that will bring economic players from across the province together to drive, lead and coordinate regional economic growth’, said the Minister’s spokesperson.  It is planned as an independent membership-based body, the province’s 40 or more business promotion bodies and economic development agencies to be incorporated into the EDP. The main goal is to address poverty, the province’s biggest challenge, by stimulating economic growth and creating jobs, the Minister said. He likened the EDP to the’tiller that allows us to proactively steer our economy, which has been largely rudderless up until now’!

Some of the organisations earmarked to join the EDP include Accelerate Cape Town, Agri Western Cape, the City of Cape Town, the provincial government, Wesgro, Overstrand Municipality, Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut, Fabcos Western Cape, Cape Town Tourism, the Cape Town International Convention Centre, the Cape Winelands District Municipality, Fair Trade in Tourism, Fedhasa Cape, and NAFCOC Western Cape.   The EDP has been convened over the past 15 months by a steering committee led for the Minister by Cape Town Partnership CEO Andrew Boraine.

Given that the EDP is a brand new body still in its infancy, it could take a considerable time for the Minister’s first task of the unification of tourism in the Western Cape to be achieved.  Boraine has said that progress in achieving the goals could be slow, and that results may only visible in ten years from now! The biggest issue is how it deals with Cape Town Tourism, which expressed its independence at the time when the Minister first started mooting the concept of an EDP for the Western Cape.  A further concern is that Boraine has been quoted as saying that the first EDP priority is the Future Cape 2040 initiative, creating a vision of the future of the province, whereas the Minister has identified the unification of the tourism industry as its first priority!

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

Western Cape tourism to be marketed by Wesgro as a business, focusing on West Africa!

A concern about the future marketing of the tourism industry in the Western Cape, given the closure of Cape Town Routes Unlimited and its incorporation within Wesgro, and the departure of its CEO Calvyn Gilfellan on 31 March, motivated me to call Wesgro and request an appointment with its CEO Nils Flaatten.  Despite the busy and short week prior to Easter, he made time for the interview on 5 April.

The hurdles put in my way to meet Mr Flaatten were considerable, and demonstrated the personality of the organisation and told me more about the company than the time I spent with Mr Flaatten.  It also demonstrated how far removed Wesgro, the Western Cape Trade promotion and Investment agency, is from the Tourism industry, if ‘customer service’ is anything to go by.  When I called to set up the interview, Mr Flaatten’s secretary insisted that I follow ‘protocol’ and e-mail her the meeting request, and tell her who I am.  I had done this telephonically, and it became a power struggle, with constant interruptions from her, before she accepted my meeting request telephonically.  She indicated that it would take a considerable time to get an appointment date, which she would e-mail me!  A Tweet to express my dismay about this lack of approachability by our province’s new tourism head, combined with an e-mail to Alan Winde, Western Cape Minister of Economic Development, Finance and Tourism, led to a call directly from Mr Flaatten, offering a meeting for a few days later at 11h30, or so I heard.  Mr Flaatten called at 7h45 on that day, asking where I was, having expected me at 7h30!  As a late night blogger and guest house owner I would never have accepted such a time slot, which seemed very ‘Johannesburg’ to me!  Mr Flaatten said he would be out of town for two weeks, and could only reschedule a meeting thereafter.  Yet his secretary called later in the morning, and offered me a midday meeting, which I accepted with gratitude.  For the first time, she offered parking, and took all the relevant details telephonically.  I arrived at the building half an hour early, wanting to make sure that I arrived on time, but I was not allowed into the building as Wesgro had not alerted the parking garage staff at the boom! They refused to let me in, and traffic problems were caused with other garage users wanting to enter.  I had to call Wesgro to ask them to let me in. However, all the staff were in a meeting, and Mr Flaatten’s secretary could not be contacted. I was told that I would be called back.  No such call came, and I had to call again after 20 minutes of being trapped at the boom, and having been threatened by the parking staff that the traffic department would be called if I did not move my car!  I was given a bay number by the Wesgro switchboard and relayed this to the boom operator, but it was refused because it had not been sent to them on the prescribed form!  Needless to say, this incompetent stakeholder-unfriendly introduction to Wesgro twice in one week made my heart sink, and realise how much smarter and visitor-friendly the Western Cape tourism industry is.

I was shocked when I saw the reception area in which I had to wait for Mr Flaatten, which doubled up as an office, with two ugly red chairs. Mr Flaatten’s office did not look much better, the same style ugly red chairs serving as visitor chairs with a rather nice blue desk, but the blue not matching Wesgro’s corporate blue, the functional office having no warmth or professionalism. Mr Flaatten seemed professional but distant, not giving one the feeling that one could ever have a collegial relationship with him in his new role as provincial tourism head. He has headed up Wesgro for the last two years. I was surprised when he asked me to tell me who I am, not what the interview was about, and he made it appear that he knew nothing about me at all!  I at least had Googled his name, and had found out that he went to school in Stellenbosch, served in the South African Navy, and had worked in investment banks in the United Kingdom and Hong Kong.

I told him that other than its name, and having only a broad idea of what Wesgro does, I knew nothing more, and that I wanted to know what its role will be in taking over the duties of Cape Town Routes Unlimited.  Wesgro is governed by the Wesgro Act, and has three duties according to the Act:

*   to attract and retain foreign investment in the Western Cape

*   to grow exports

*   to increasingly attract business to the city and the province

Wesgro is funded by both the City of Cape Town (R10 million) and the Western Cape government (R18,4 million), the R25 million which Cape Town Routes Unlimited received from the Western Cape government being added to give a total of R53 million, larger than the budget of Cape Town Tourism.  The organisation services the province, ultimately reporting to Minister Winde.  It also works with the City of Cape Town’s Mayoral Committee member Belinda Walker, doing strategy planning.  The organisation’s operations include:

*   hosting inward trade missions, at which they try to ‘matchmake’ the visiting delegation members with local businesses via ‘speed dating’

*   outward missions travel overseas, promoting trade with the Western Cape, benefiting from sponsorships for flights and other travel costs from the Department of Trade and Industry.

Any Western Cape business is seen to be a ‘member’ of Wesgro, although one does not take out or pay for a membership. The organisation also looks to stimulate the setting up and development of ‘SMME’s’ (small businesses), including entrepreneurs, emerging entrepreneurs, and start-up businesses.  They also look to grow sectors of Western Cape businesses, and a number of such sector development agencies have been developed, for IT, Craft and Design, etc.  Geographically, Wesgro is concentrating on the ‘West African Trade Corridor’, which includes Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon, Namibia, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.  “The Headquarter for African business should be Cape Town”, Mr Flaatten said.  He shared that a trip to Accra the week before had seen distribution agreements signed with 20 companies represented in the trade delegation.  It was at this point that Mr Flaatten justified his organisation’s take-over of Cape Town Routes Unlimited, saying that Wesgro already has links to the chambers of commerce and influential players in these West African countries, so in the same way they can engage with the leading tourism players in these countries to attract more West African tourists to Cape Town and the Western Cape. He added that the Northern Hemisphere countries of the UK, the USA, Europe and Japan would only show a 1,5 % growth, labelling them as ‘concentration risk’.  Currently most of the Western Cape exports go to the UK, to the Netherlands, and to Germany, in that order. Mr Flaatten also said that 73% of South Africa’s foreign direct investment in Africa comes from Cape Town businesses, mainly being in the financial services, real estate, and hospitality sectors. He added that by 2030 there would be more middle income earners in Africa than in India.  He also emphasised the potential of the BRICS countries.  Further high growth high income countries are Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Argentina, and the United Arab Emirates. Inward missions coming to Cape Town are from the USA, the United Kingdom, Germany and France, and they offer marketing services, sales support, and call centre services.

Mr Flaatten gave his views of our tourism industry by saying that it has a number of outspoken characters in it, implying that this would be something he would have to get used to!  Wesgro has taken over the 25 Cape Town Routes Unlimited staff, who were in the same building, and will be assimilated into his team, retaining the benefits, and terms and conditions at which they were employed originally.  Wesgro will ‘capitalise on the Cape Town Routes Unlimited’ marketing knowledge, Mr Flaatten said, but I was concerned that he could not tell me the name of the most senior marketing executive (we think it is Debbie Damant, not known to most) that he has ‘inherited’, especially given that the marketing of Cape Town Routes Unlimited had been strongly driven by its then CEO Calvyn Gilfellan.  The Board of Cape Town Routes Unlimited, now led by ACSA’s Deon Cloete due to the move of its previous Chairman Peter Bacon to Mauritius, will oversee the activities that are in the Cape Town Routes Unlimited Annual Performance Plan, until the organisation with its Board is dissolved when the Western Cape Tourism Act of 2004 is repealed.  Similarly, the Wesgro Act must be amended, to allow it to additionally manage destination marketing for the Western Cape.

Mr Flaatten requested the industry to give him a month, so that he can get to know his new staff, and what the capacity requirements are, not wanting to be irresponsible in becoming unnecessarily large.  First he must stabilise the staff situation, and then they must focus on planning for the following financial year. They have already hosted a workshop with 100 regional and local tourism bureaus, seeing them as ‘subject matter experts’, and not wishing to duplicate their work, he said. He will also engage with industry representative bodies such as FEDHASA Cape, SATSA, etc, but I left him with a reminder that the tourism industry consists of a large number of small businesses, many not belonging to the big tourism associations, and that their voices should be heard too. Listening to the tourism industry will be the biggest challenge for him currently, Mr Flaatten said. He realises that the ‘Cape Town & Western Cape’ brand is a problem ‘which will not be easy to fix’.

The Board of Directors of Wesgro raises interesting questions.  Board members Cape Town Tourism CEO Mariette Du Toit-Helmbold, its Board Vice-Chairman and CEO of the Cape Town Partnership, Bulelwa Ngewana, and Board member Guy Lundy, CEO of Accelerate Cape Town and Wesgro Vice Chairman, may prevent duplication of marketing activity between Wesgro and Cape Town Tourism, but ideally should remain independent tourism bodies, so that the industry benefits from the best of both bodies.  Ravi Naidoo, organiser of the Design Indaba, is well-known and highly regarded.  Interesting too is that Alderman Belinda Walker is on the Board, but does not deal with Tourism matters in the City of Cape Town, which could lead to duplication of tourism management within the City.  One could be concerned about two Boards of Directors managing the duties of Wesgro, until Cape Town Routes Unlimited is closed down legally, and about the incestuous duplication of Board members of Wesgro and Cape Town Tourism.

For an organisation that had a number of months warning of taking over Cape Town Routes Unlimited, and that had taken over its operations four days prior to my visit, I was concerned about the general lack of marketing insight, terminology (other than the branding issue), and discussion that I heard from Mr Flaatten during our lengthy interview.  He did not mention Cape Town Tourism, and how Wesgro will avoid duplication of marketing activities with the city tourism marketing body.  The Wesgro website only shows an amended logo, in that the new duty is incorporated in its descriptor underneath it: ‘The Western Cape Destination Marketing, Investment and Trade Promotion Agency’, and contains a block of information to state that it has taken over the duties of Cape Town Routes Unlimited, with a link to the now defunct tourism body’s website!  I was concerned about the very business-like Wesgro culture, which does not appear ‘customer friendly’ nor service-orientated in simple requests of setting up a meeting and honouring a parking arrangement, which does not auger well for our tourism industry. The offices are functional but unattractive, not matching the tourism industry image. I was concerned that Mr Flaaten did not seem to know anything about Minister Winde’s EDP, which I thought would reside in Wesgro, and would eventually become the home of most Western Cape industry development bodies, the products and services of which Wesgro appears to market.  Mr Flaatten was very responsive in providing the Cape Town Routes Unlimited Annual Performance Plan which they will be working to achieve.  The 27 page Plan lists the mission as marketing the Western Cape as a desirable leisure, business and events tourism destination, and its main goal is to ‘position Cape Town and the Western Cape as a premier leisure, events and business tourism destination in Africa’. However, none of the defined goals are measurable.  The budget breakdown is disconcerting, with about 50% going to staff salaries, and only 24% going to marketing expenditure. Much of the performance is measured in terms of the number of meetings held, the number of convention bids presented, and the only tourism related measurement targets are the number of international arrivals (1,6 million) and domestic arrivals (3,2 million) for the current financial year, Cape Town Routes Unlimited only expecting to generate 5% of each kind of tourist through its marketing efforts, which begs the question as to why it existed in the first instance!

We will give Wesgro the month that has been requested, and await the way forward for the marketing of the Western Cape with trepidation.

POSTSCRIPT 18/4: In a media release sent out by Wesgro a week ago (but not to contacts on the Cape Town Routes Unlimited media list!), Nils Flaatten said that he would continue to report to the Wesgro Board of Directors, and to the Cape Town Routes Unlimited Board on a quarterly basis about ‘expenditure and performance against predetermined objects’. “Flaatten assured tourism industry stakeholder (sic) that there would be no ‘disruption to the delivery of the tourism destination function in our province'”, the media release added. It also stated that Cape Town Routes Unlimited and Wesgro will continue to occupy their respective offices in their current building, and that the telephone and e-mail details of the Cape Town Routes Unlimited staff ‘will remain in operation until further notice’.

This Tourism Week asked some critical questions about Wesgro’s new role in handling the Tourism marketing responsibility for the Western Cape in its newsletter on 13 April.

Wesgro, Waldorf Arcade, 80 St George’s Mall, Cape Town.  Tel (021) 487-8600.  www.wesgro.co.za Twitter: @Wesgro

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

Economic Development Programme to amalgamate Cape tourism bodies?

The planned Economic Development Programme (EDP), which was announced by Alan Winde, Western Cape Provincial Minister of Finance, Economic Development and Tourism, more than a year ago, could see the amalgamation of Cape Town Routes Unlimited and Cape Town Tourism.

In a report in Southern African Tourism Update, a new steering committee of seventeen members for the EDP is announced, which includes current Cape Town Routes Unlimited (CTRU) Chairman Peter Bacon, Protea Hotels Group’s Otto Stehlik, and Western Cape province head of Economic Development and Tourism Solly Fourie, with Minister Winde.  The role of the Steering Committee is to ‘guide the final design, implementation and launch of the EDP’. More specifically, the Steering Committee agreed that the EDP should seamlessly integrate all sectors of the Western Cape economy, it should ‘institutionalise’the partnership between government and business to create mutual accountability for the future of the economy’ of the province, it should guide business around shared goals, it should create an environment that is conducive to small and large business as well as attracting investment to the province, it should provide ‘economic and market intelligence’, and should monitor the performance of the economy.  Greater employment will also be addressed by this not-for-profit body. One of the specific aims of the EDP is to create ‘a single strategy and brand for the region’s economy’, says a media release issued by Minister Winde earlier this year.  The ‘Cape Town and Western Cape’ brand name was highly controversial when it was introduced at the inception of Cape Town Routes Unlimited.

The report states interestingly that ‘it is anticipated that the EDP will resolve the current duplication of marketing efforts by CTRU and Cape Town Tourism (CTT), resulting from a historical impasse between the province and the city, which funds CTT’.  When the Minister first announced the establishment of the EDP, and his desire to amalgamate all economic and tourism related bodies in the Western Cape, Cape Town Tourism expressed its vehement opposition to the EDP, and declared its independence.  The Minister has not mentioned Cape Town Tourism as one of the bodies to be amalgamated more recently, and Cape Town Tourism has also not done so, just referring to its benefit for the province in general at its recent AGM.  Even more interesting as that Cape Town Tourism’s legal advisor Mike Evans of Webber Wentzel referred blatantly, and out of context to the AGM proceedings, to the closing down of Cape Town Routes Unlimited, while he may have meant that the operations of the EDP would be incorporated into the EDP.

Winde has used the model of the London Development Agency for the EDP, and has appointed Cape Town Partnership CEO to lead a task team for the establishment of the EDP, which is to open its doors in April 2012. In September we wrote about the Economic Development Agency, its name at the time, and the list of eighteen Western Cape economic promotion bodies which are to be amalgamated into it, including Wesgro, the Cape Film Commission, Cape Town Routes Unlimited, and the Cape Town Fashion Council. There has been no mention of Cape Town Tourism as being one of the bodies since then.

Only through the amalgamation of both Cape Town Routes Unlimited and Cape Town Tourism can the current costly duplication of marketing Cape Town and the Western Cape be eliminated.  Whilst the City of Cape Town funds Cape Town Tourism, and the DA rules both the city and the province, it will be interesting to see if the City of Cape Town and Western Cape province can see the bigger picture and co-operate in pulling Cape Town Tourism into the body as well, for the benefit of a united tourism industry in the Cape. The proviso of course would be that the EDP should be run efficiently and along business principles.  The management of Cape Town Routes Unlimited has been a disaster, and is not a model for how the EDP should be run!  We call on the Minister to communicate in more detail with the tourism industry, to explain his plans with the EDP.

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