Tag Archives: Hamilton’s Rugby Club

Tourism industry in Cape Town salutes Fabulous February!

FebruaryFebruary is the best month for the Tourism industry in Cape Town, mainly driven by the Mining Indaba, as well as Valentine’s Day, which falls on a Saturday this year.

The following events will boost the coffers of the Western Cape in the next three weeks:

*   The Cape Town Electronic Music Festival runs from 3 – 8 February.  The website reflects that the City of Cape Town is sponsoring the event, no doubt in providing the City Hall at no charge.  This is how the venue is described: ‘Voted number 1 global destination by New York Times (that was in Continue reading →

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 24/25/26 October

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*  Sharing services such as Uber and Airbnb are coming under pressure to comply with laws of running their businesses and paying taxes, some countries reacting strictly, and others welcoming their input to the expansion of the economy. Uber was banned in Germany for a while, but has been allowed to operate again.  Airbnb has picked up problems in Barcelona for breaching the city’s rental rules.   A number of court cases in the USA alone relate to payment of gratuities to drivers, advertised as being included in the price, but drivers do not appear to be receiving their full gratuities.

*   The World’s 50 Best Restaurants has moved its presentation date to Monday 1 June 2015, having hosted the awards at the end of April for the past twelve years.  The awards recognise the best restaurants in the world.  In 2014 only The Test Kitchen made the prestigious top 50 list.  (received via media release from The World’s 50 Best Restaurants, forwarded by Tamsin Snyman)

*   Saronsberg has relaunched its Provenance range with a new label, depicting the ‘From Earth, From Water‘ sculpture by Angus Continue reading →

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 19 July

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*   What was once known as Trinity, with a restaurant and club, is being relaunched as the Bennett Street Complex next week, as an events venue, comprising of the Bennett Street function room to be called “Funktion” (named after its Funktion 1 sound system), Gold Restaurant, and Trinity, the music brand.  The venue will be an alternative to the Cape Town International Convention Centre, for hosting functions and events. (via Hype Media release)

*  The Cape Town Festival of Beer, South Africa’s biggest beer festival, will be held for the fourth year running, on 22 – 24 November at the Hamilton’s Rugby Club in Green Point.  The Festival celebrates the brewing heritage, culture and beer craft from around South Africa and the world.  Craft, micro, and mega brewers will showcase over 200 local and international beers.  There will also be food and beer pairings, guided beer tours, workshops, blind tastings, and home brewing demonstrations.(via KL PR & Events).

*   Darling is hosting the 10th Voorkamerfest from 6 – 8 September, a collection of theatre, music, and dance shows performed by local and international artists in Darling locals’ ’voorkamers’.  The festival is organised and run by the local community, under the auspices of the Darling Festival Trust. It was started by Dutch producers Wim Visser and Inge Bos, together with Pieter-Dirk Uys.  The hub of the event is Evita se Perron, where festival-goers can collect tickets for one or all of the Voorkamerfest routes. Each route takes one on a journey between three different Darling homes, at which three varied 25-minute performances are showcased. There are four different time slots during the weekend, each with seven routes, with 21 performances in total. (via Hazell PR & Communications)

*   The City of Cape Town has announced that the MyCiTi Bus station at the Civic Centre will undergo upgrade renovations from Monday, for the next 3 – 4 months.

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

Cape Town Festival of Beer Sweet and Mercedes Benz Sour Service Awards

The Sweet Service Award  goes to the inaugural Cape Town Festival of Beer, which started yesterday and runs at Hamilton’s Rugby Club in Green Point until Saturday, and to Shafeeka Anthony of Rabbit in a Hat Communications, the PR agency that organised the media invitations, in particular.  She is one of the most organised persons in this position I have ever dealt with, sending follow-up notes every day without being pushy, and generously made vouchers for food and beer available for the opening day.  Twenty breweries and 40 beer brands are exhibiting, and many are micro-breweries (there are 21 micro-breweries in South Africa).  I was particularly interested in the Darling Brew stand, because it had a large background banner saying SLOWBEER – it is brewed for 4 weeks instead of 2 days, which is the norm for commercial beers.

The Sour Service Service Award goes to Mercedes Benz Financial Services, for their attempt to deceive their customers, by having sent out the following sms earlier this week: Your good standing with MBFS qualifies you for a skip payment.  Call 0861daimler & quote ref Festive 2010 at least 10 days before your payment due date. T & C apply”.  When one calls, they ask for which month one wishes to skip the payment.  Then the crunch question : how would one like to repay the ‘skipping’ – by having one month of repayment added on, or repayment by spreading it over the rest of the repayment term! Earlier this year Mercedes Benz was very generous in allowing one month payment free, communicated in the same way by sms.  It sounded like another generous offer from the company, but it wasn’t, and it felt as if one was being misled and taken for a ride.

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.