It was a surprise to receive a forwarded e-mail yesterday about the sale of the Portfolio Collection, started by Liz Westby-Nunn 30 years ago, to Moja Media, effective next week.  Many accommodation owners who still advertise in the publication will heave a huge sigh of relief!

Mrs Westby-Nunn started a series of three accommodation publications to market her own property Klippe Rivier outside Swellendam, and encouraged other properties to join her on this joint marketing venture.  Her link to the guest house was never revealed, but it was obvious once one knew about it, in that it featured prominently in the little marketing Mrs Westby-Nunn did for her Portfolio Collection client properties.

In the days prior to the establishment of the Tourism Grading Council of South Africa and the internet, the only publication in which one could launch one’s accommodation establishment was by advertising in the Portfolio B&B Collection, and almost every accommodation establishment which started in the last twenty years advertised in this publication.  In those days a third-page advertisement already cost over R10000 per annum, and with it came a prescribed annual inspection that made every guest house owner’s stress levels soar.  Portfolio has a four-shield quality rating system, and Mrs Westby-Nunn lost many a client over fights about the colour of the shield awarded, especially if there was a downgrade over time.  Her assessors were mostly super, and very good in providing suggestions for what could be improved to maintain the shield colour.  Theresa Katz became a friend to many establishment owners in the Western Cape, and she was an important buffer between advertisers and Mrs Westby-Nunn, who did not speak to her advertisers directly, if she could help it!  Mrs Westby-Nunn had no interest in building a relationship with her advertisers, and if one received a call from her one knew one was in terrible trouble, usually as a result of a guest complaint.

The Portfolio Collection consisted of three books: Country Places Collection (to which she added Private Game Reserves, and properties in other Southern African countries to justify publishing this book, and in which one was forced to take a full page advertisement at an exorbitant fee); the Retreats Collection (which was for properties with more than 5 bedrooms, and one was forced to take an half-page ad); and the B&B Collection, which was costing close to R20000 for a third page ad recently.  She influenced the fortune of many a guest house, including our own, in prescribing that no B&B was allowed to be bigger than five rooms, or else one had to advertise in the far more expensive Retreats Collection, yet this was only on invitation by Mrs Westby-Nunn, meaning that she controlled the expansion in size and the marketing of the more upmarket properties. As our Whale Cottage Camps Bay had five guest rooms, we had to buy another house in Bakoven close by, with five rooms as well, to meet her prescriptive requirements.

The final straw for many advertisers came when the internet became increasingly used in accommodation marketing and bookings, and Mrs Westby-Nunn became greedy when she developed a website for her publications, listing each advertiser property on it, and then taking a 10 % commission for each booking received in addition to the advertising fee one had paid to be in her publications! Members of the Camps Bay guest house accommodation association called a meeting with Mrs Westby-Nunn’s GM, Donald Paul, a journalist who lasted at the company for less than two months, being totally unsuited to the job.   Mr Paul was unable to appease the members of the association, and appeared to have tape recorded the entire discussion without our knowledge and permission, producing perfect minutes of the meeting without taking notes during the meeting.  Members were adamant that they should not pay commission, which was not in the contract. Advertisers were subsequently forced to immediately sign a contract amendment agreeing to the commission payment, or face exclusion from the publication and the website.   Despite the establishment of the Tourism Grading Council and it awarding stars for the quality of each establishment, Mrs Westby-Nunn stuck to her colour shield grading system, and reluctantly allowed the Tourism Grading Council star grading to be featured in her publications as well.

Mrs Westby-Nunn worked hard at marketing her publications initially, and even got herself voted onto the SA Tourism Board, and became its Chairman, which meant that she got her publications into every SA Tourism office around the world, which was excellent for her advertisers.  We remember the days when our guests arrived clutching a Portfolio book, then the accommodation bible.  However, Portfolio’s competitors soon rushed off to the Department of Tourism, to complain about the unfair advantage Portfolio was enjoying, and Mrs Westby-Nunn soon lost the distribution advantage, and her position on the SA Tourism board.  When Mrs Westby-Nunn had a dispute with us, we bravely decided to leave the publication, and to market our Whale Cottage Portfolio (the name was chosen in ‘honour’ of Mrs Westby-Nunn’s business) ourselves!  Mrs Westby-Nunn fired clients that challenged her, including a Hout Bay lawyer-owned guest house, which had taken the publication to court over the definition of ‘Atlantic Seaboard’, a case which she lost.  Another guest house in Stellenbosch started a legal fund to fight the publication about the commission charged on internet bookings, and they too were not allowed to advertise again.  We have never looked back in not advertising in Portfolio, and over time we have seen more and more establishments not renew their advertising due to the ever increasing cost of the advertising (20 % annual increases were the norm for many years), and due to the way that they were treated.  Leaving Portfolio meant that we could expand our Whale Cottage Camps Bay to 11 rooms, and sell our Whale Cottage Bakoven.  Most guest houses have been too afraid to speak up and disagree with Portfolio, knowing that they too would be fired as clients if they disagreed with any Portfolio directive.

The tables turned for Mrs Westby-Nunn when guest houses realised that they could market their guest houses equally well, especially via their own websites, and when the Tourism Grading Council became the accepted standard for accommodation quality assessment.  The three Portfolio booklets reduced in size year on year, as Portfolio too was affected by the recession.  Mrs Westby-Nunn’s customer-unfriendly interaction, if there was any, with her clients, and the appointment of her sister as an assessor for the Western Cape after Miss Katz had left cost her many advertisers.  Her business has reduced to such an extent that the company had to amalgamate all three publications into one book this year, with only 495 establishment advertisers, to save face. The Portfolio B&B Collection used to have 500 advertisers alone in the past.   Portfolio’s pay-off line ‘Benchmark of the Best’ became increasingly misleading, as top establishments withdrew their advertising, and the Tourism Grading Council became the accommodation quality benchmark in South Africa. It was evident that Mrs Westby-Nunn was looking to get out of her business, having put her Klippe Rivier property up for sale some time ago.

One has not heard of the new Portfolio publisher, and it will be interesting to see how the new owners will deal with the negative image of the company that they have just purchased.  A new Portfolio iPad app. is to be launched shortly, says the company’s media release.

POSTSCRIPT 23/2: We received the following e-mail from James Delaney, one of the two directors of Moja Media, the purchasers of Portfolio: “You may not remember me, but many years ago I think you were my marketing lecturer at UCT! I read your blog about Portfolio Collection this morning, and thanks – it all helps to understand what has not worked in the past. We’ve bought Portfolio because we believe in the brand, but we’re looking at many different ways of improving things going forward. I hope they get your favourable review over time.  I’ve been in tourism for many years now, I was involved with the launch of Welgevonden, built and ran Shangana Cultural Village, been a consultant on tourism projects like Cradle of Humankind and Constitution Hill, launched the Moja Heritage Collection, and now as Moja Media have been building up a stable of tourism publications (print and online). So I do know some of the marketing challenges which lie ahead, and am looking forward to making my contribution”.

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