Tag Archives: International Olympic Committee

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 10 September

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*   The Earth’s magnetic pole is slowly shifting, from North to South, and vice versa, and may mean that the Northern Lights will no loner be seen in the Northern Hemisphere, and that mammals such as whales which navigate via the magnetic poles may change their migration pattern.

*   Western Cape Tourism Minister Alan Winde dived with gentle cow-sharks off Simonstown yesterday, to showcase a little known experience, and to create awareness for the province’s ‘Water Connects us’ theme for Tourism Month. The Minister said that the province’s water-themed experiences enhanced its position as one of the country’s most popular destinations, more than 1 million tourists having visited the Western Cape last year.  Provincial marketing agency Wesgro will showcase a variety of the province’s unique and family fun water-based experiences, including its 20 (out of a total Continue reading →

South Africa wins Olympic Games with Stellenrust Fairtrade ‘London 2012’ wines!

Brand ‘South Africa’ and ‘Fairtrade‘ will be in the lips of hundreds of thousands of Olympic Games supporters for the next three weeks, being branded on two of the three official ‘London 2012’ wines produced for the 2012 Olympic Games, reports Winemag. The Chenin Blanc and Rosé wines (made from Pinotage, Shiraz, and Merlot) come from Stellenrust, the largest Fairtrade-certified wine estate in South Africa, one of the largest family-owned wine estates in the country, and ‘a very successful winery’, according to its Platter entry.

For the first time in Olympic history, the International Olympic Committee contracted with Bibendum, a London-based wine merchant, which was awarded the title ‘European Merchant of the Year 2012’, to source 650000 litres of 2012 vintage wines, for sale at the Olympic Games venues in London.  The third wine is not Fairtrade-certified, and comes from Brazil’s Seival Estate, being a Shiraz, Tempranillo, and Gamay Nouveau blend. The Brazilian wine reflects the country hosting the Olympic Games in 2016, and its emergence as a wine producing country.

The wines are to be sold at £4,80 (R62) for a 187 ml recyclable PET bottle, and at R250 for a 750 ml bottle. One million bottles each of the Rosé and Shiraz Tempranillo will be available for sale, as will be 1,2 million bottles of Chenin Blanc.  A total of 9 million tickets have been sold to Olympic Games spectators.

In addition to the marvellous branding benefit for the country and its wine industry, an excellent outcome of this win for the Stellenbosch wine estate is that R450000 will go its staff, for allocation to social upliftment projects, which will be overseen by the Fairtrade Foundation in the UK, reports The Times.

WOSA (Wines of South Africa) and SA Tourism couldn’t have wished for a better free marketing opportunity to give the world a taste for South African wines and for marketing South Africa as a tourism destination

POSTSCRIPT 5/8: The Fairtrade ethical logo is attracting increasing custom, reports the Cape Argus, internationally its brands having generated sales of € 5 billion in 2011.  In the UK the spend on Fairtrade brands increased by 12% last year relative to 2010.  Locally, Fairtrade sales more than tripled to R73 million last year.  Cape Chamber of Commerce President Michael Bagraim said that the Fairtrade certification could help give local products a competitive edge in international export markets.  Wine and coffee are the Fairtrade products that have sold best locally, South Africans having bought 255600 bottles and 3,5 million cups of coffee certified by Fairtrade.  Woolworths Cafés, operated by TriBeCa, sell Fairtrade certified organic coffee.

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

SA Tourism goes Down Under to attract visitors to South Africa!

Marthinus van Schalkwyk, national Minister of Tourism, returned from a marketing trip to Australia last week, where he promoted South Africa as the ideal leisure and business tourism destination. Australia ranks sixth in long-haul source markets, and its tourism numbers to South Africa grew by 39 % between 2005 and 2010, to reach 107000 visitors.

Minister van Schalkwyk is looking to grow the Australian market: “We are aiming to achieve and exceed the target of 120000 Australian tourist arrivals in the next two years. We actively need to work at improving seasonality by exposing and promoting South Africa’s all-year, easy-to-do and value-for-money experiences”. The Minister said that Australian tourists look for ‘unique, memorable destinations with amazing wildlife, incredible beaches and coastlines, urban centres and warm, friendly people‘.

SA Tourism opened an office in Sydney nine years ago, and has invited the travel trade on familiarisation trips to South Africa, and has conducted joint roadshows and workshops with the travel trade in Australia. Business Tourism to South Africa was marketed too, the Minister referring to the successful lnternational Olympic Committee and COP17 Climate Change conferences held in Durban last year.  The Minister visited the Asia-Pacific Incentives and Meetings Expo, at which our country was promoted as a ‘highly accessible and value-for-money destination’, and its successes since hosting the 2010 World Cup were highlighted.

The Australian tourism market is attractive, with its visitors staying 15 days and spending R11800 per person per trip on average.  It has a strong word-of-mouth communication network with so many former South Africans living in Australia, although not all of them are positively predisposed to their former homeland.

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

FIFA “FOUL!” kicks up a fuss!

A new book by British “investigative sports reporter” Andrew Jennings, called “FOUL! The Secret World of FIFA: Bribes, Vote Rigging and Ticket Scandals”, has kicked up a fuss just days ahead of the start of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, reports The Times.  The book is critical of FIFA, and its “corruption and greed”.  

Jennings is one of few, if not the only, journalist to be banned from FIFA media conferences, having focused on sport corruption reporting for the last thirty years.  He started his “stirring” with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Chairman Juan Antonio Samaranch, having discovered his political past during the Second World War, leading to three books on the subject, and 5 days in a Swiss jail.

The IOC and FIFA shared the same marketing company, International Sport and Leisure, and this led Jennings to investigate FIFA, amid allegations of bribery by the marketing company to secure marketing contracts and television broadcast rights, with kickbacks to FIFA, before it went into liquidation.  

As far as the South African bid for the 2010 World Cup goes, Jennings alleges that Jack Warner, a FIFA executive from Trinidad and Tobago, wanted one thing above all – access to Nelson Mandela, and he was only prepared to vote for our country if his wish came true!   Jennings is disparaging of Warner, and his debt to the 2006 World Cup team from these two countries, who still have not been paid, it is alleged, despite a British court order to this effect. 

The FIFA ticketing and accommodation agency MATCH has not escaped Jennings’ eagle eye, and he blames MATCH for “… has milked the fans”, particlarly given the world’s economic recession, which meant they could not afford the excessive cost of the hospitality packages MATCH was selling.  FIFA President Sepp Blatter’s nephew Philippe Blatter is a director of MATCH.   “Not even the American wholesaler could sell the overpriced hospitality packages.  For Match it was just greed, greed, greed”, he writes.  “What matters is the percentage of the commissions they make.  So they push the prices higher to make it a bigger commission.  But the corporates won’t spend money in this economic climate”.

Jennings cynically states that there was never a shortage of tickets to the matches as we were led to believe at one stage, and that South African municipalities are buying tickets “because we have to believe there is a scarcity value; there has been a political move to cover up the scandal. Blatter is dishing out tickets to the unemployed – you are going to get screwed” he added.  He goes on to allege that any profits that FIFA makes will go to the FIFA official headquarters in Zurich.   The Local Organising Committee receives a lashing as well :”Officials and the government have sold South Africa down the river”.  His final parting shot: “..after the final whistle blows, South Africans have nothing to look forward to but a mountain of scandal, debt and  – in our shiny new, expensive stadiums – some rather large white elephants”!

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