Tag Archives: ITB

Cape Town loses numerous events due to lack of bidding budget!

 

 Cape Town StadiumThe City of Cape Town has lost 12 bids for new Events for Cape Town in the past six months, and has lost two existing events to other cities, said Anton Groenewald, Executive Director of the City of Cape Town Tourism, Events, and Marketing Directorate, at the Annual General Meeting of Cape Town Tourism two weeks ago.

According to Southern African Tourism Update, Groenewald blamed the ‘City’s limited bidding budget‘ and the stronger international currencies of other bidding countries for the poor track record. The weaker Rand this year affected the costs of bidding for international events, he said:  ‘Exchange rate fluctuation impacts on our ability to bid because almost all competitive bids are in euros, pounds or dollars. This means that at the time of bidding earlier this year, the exchange rate was such that events and concerts at that time became financially unviable because the dollar or euro equivalent was more than we could absorb. Secondly, events and global brands are asking higher and larger fees because other city destinations are paying larger upfront fees to secure their participation. So a fee last year of R3,5m for an event has now increased to US$1,5m (R9,9m), because that is what another destination paid this global brand. We simply cannot compete at these rates.  While Cape Town seems to enjoy international recognition and awareness as a destination, what we do not have is an increase in enquiries and how to convert this into purchases’.

Groenewald’s Directorate has a massive budget at R560 million, out of the Continue reading →

‘Travellers staying away in their (sic) droves’ from South Africa, says Cape Town Tourism!

The verbose report-back by Cape Town Tourism CEO Mariette du Toit-Helmbold about her organisation’s attendance at the world’s largest travel and tourism expo and convention ITB (10000 exhibitors from 188 countries) in Berlin ten days ago contains the shock admission that tourists are ‘staying away in their (sic) droves’ from South Africa, Egypt, and Greece, due to violence and political unrest in general, and due to ‘a burst of negative international publicity around violence and labour unrest’ in South Africa specifically!

One wonders what statistics Mrs Helmbold has used to draw this conclusion, and how serious this drop in tourism is, given that no tourism statistics for 2013 are available yet.  The events Mrs Helmbold blames for the drop in tourism numbers only took place in the last four months, and it would be hard for her to offer statistical evidence of her statement, in our opinion.

We have written before that Mrs Helmbold is a poor writer, and in her blogpost on the Cape Town Tourism website she wrote ‘it is important to understand and counter-address economic, political and social stability (sic) and its effect on inbound tourism‘.  Given the highly inflammatory statistically-unsubstantiated statement about the effects on tourism of recent undesirable events in the country by Mrs Helmbold, and her call to create instability if one tries to understand what she was trying to say, it is clear that Mrs Helmbold should be silenced until she leaves Cape Town Tourism in July, before she causes any further damage for brand Cape Town!   Even worse is that Cape Town Tourism has a PR and Communications department as well as a PR agency, which did not appear to edit Mrs Helmbold’s blogpost about ITB and tourism trends before posting it, it containing additional grammatical errors.

If the message of huge tourism stay-aways was one of the major ‘gems’ Mrs Helmbold brought back from Berlin, one would expect her to have made quick work to pull in Wesgro, and the City of Cape Town, as well as the Western Cape Tourism department to address this dreadful state of affairs.  No word has been heard publicly (other than the blogpost) from her since her return from Berlin, and neither does she offer any solutions to counter this image problem for tourism to our country and especially to Cape Town, despite having dedicated one quarter of her blogpost to this image theme.

Amongst all the waffle, the following few trends (the actual essence of the blogpost, according to its headline!) were found:

*   tourists now want ‘a simple, sustainable, and self-sufficient life’

*   tourists want meaningful community interaction and involvement

*   last minute impulse bookings are increasing, requiring greater flexibility, changed cancellation policies. and greater use of digital marketing

*   In 2012 beach holidays were most frequently booked by European tourists, although growth for this type of tourism was static relative to the year before.  Cape Town Tourism purposely moved away from a positioning for Cape Town of natural beauty of its beaches and mountains 18 months ago.

*   despite contradictory growth statistics presented for Germany, Germans took 329 million domestic and international trips in 2012, with a growth in 3%, ‘and now accounts for 45% of the entire travel market’, but Mrs Helmbold does not explain what this statistic means!

*   traditional source markets are predominantly aged 49 – 65 years, and our local tourism products should be geared for this age group.  However, emerging market tourists are far younger, and these could be from China, Russia, and Brazil.

The concluding paragraph of the blogpost is pure Helmbold, completely non-understandable, and not preceded by anything that could explain what she is trying to say: ‘Nostalgia is the worst business model. never waste the opportunity that comes with a crisis’!

It is clear that the Cape Town Tourism Board as well as its funders, the City of Cape Town, are not reading Mrs Helmbold’s ramblings, in that they are not addressing the damage she causes with her badly worded nonsensical writing on behalf of our beautiful city!

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

Tourism Indaba: Indaba about Indaba needed. Time to move it to Cape Town?

The Indaba last month received heavy criticism, more critical than we have seen in many years. Many tourism players no longer bother to go, or went for the last time this year. Given that the Cape Town International Convention Centre is to be expanded in size, surely the time has come for the country’s tourism showcase to be held in our country’s tourism centre Cape Town!

Indaba has been held in Durban for the last 23 years of its 33 year existence. Now moves are afoot to push for the tourism expo to be permanently hosted in Durban, reports the official website of the Ethekwini Municipality, wanting the city to be synonymous with the event, such as is Berlin with ITB (International Tourismusbörse, and London with World Travel Market (WTM). Obtaining such a commitment would allow the city to ‘properly invest in it’.

SA Tourism boasted about the success of Indaba 2012, achieving an attendance of ‘more than 10000′ and 1500 exhibitors, and ‘proved to be a major success‘, being about ‘innovation, communication and quality connections’. Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk was quoted as saying at Indaba: ‘Together, we must keep our eyes on ever-changing consumer preferences, diversify our products, maintain excellent service, innovate our distribution channels, and ensure that we continue to deliver value for money. We must ensure that all our people share in the benefits of our new growth’. No, he was not referring to Indaba, he was referring to the tourism industry!

The tourism industry does not appear to have shared the feeling of success of Indaba. Hotel and Restaurant editor Andrew Moth wrote in his June editorial that ‘many of the big players in the hotel industry feel that they wasted their time and their money on Indaba this year‘. He added that it no longer is what it once was, now ‘overtaken by technology and of course greed’.

The most vocal criticism of Indaba this year came from film shoot co-ordinator Max Wallace, UK Director of Painted Earth Productions, writing in South African Tourism Update.  He wrote that he had attended Indaba for three years running, and asked: ‘Is Indaba still a South African show?’. He reflected that Indaba was very quiet this year, especially in the DEC (Durban Exhibition Centre), describing it as ‘grave-like’, whilst the ICC (International Convention Centre) was ‘moderately busy’, and the SADC tent ‘pumping’. His conclusion was that Indaba has lost its focus, in featuring ‘far too much same old, same old South African product’, and not enough ‘regional and inter-African product’. He was critical of municipal stands paid for by taxpayers ‘when they patently have no clue what tourism is‘. Provincial stands were lambasted by him for being ‘bloated, filled with people who are invariably rude, unable to answer queries and unwilling to make appointments…’. The Road Accident Fund was singled out by him as not fitting in with a tourism exhibition at all.  The costs of exhibiting are high, he wrote, and he was told by many that they were not sure whether they would bother with attending and exhibiting in 2013. His conclusion was that more African product should be featured, to make it an ‘African show’, and less ‘South African product’ . His final sting was that ‘South African Tourism needs to catch a wake-up call’, given that the organisers no longer know what the market wants. His letter generated a flood of comments on the newsletter website, most commenters supporting Wallace.

Some of the key points contained in the more than 30 (mostly anonymous) comments were the following:

*  Indaba has become so bad that an Indaba about Indaba needs to take place with the organisers Witches and Wizards, SA Tourism, and the Minister of Tourism, to discuss the exorbitant cost of the stands and the extras, the expensive and poor quality food, and the exhibitor and buyer mix.

*   Should Indaba not be fixed, the threat exists that the big players will host a similar African-orientated indaba elsewhere in Africa, leaving the Durban Indaba as the ‘Micky (sic) Mouse Country Club’ of game lodges and B&Bs.

*    South Africa needs to relook its tourism product mix and pricing, being eclipsed on product, price and service by its neighbouring countries

*   Indaba needs a ‘renovation’, a new location and a revamp

*   Municipal tourism exhibitors should be removed, as they affect the credibility of Indaba, waste taxpayers’ monies, and appear to have no tourism knowledge

*   More and better quality buyers are needed, and roving sellers coming to the stands should be discouraged

*   ‘We have awesome destinations, awesome products and now we just need a better way of displaying them’.

*   More time should be allocated to public days, given the important focus on Domestic Tourism

*   The number of stands should  be reduced, and stands should all be tourism-related

It would be a shame if, as Moth suggests, tourism players are too dependent on government business to challenge SA Tourism and the Indaba organisers with their feedback, and demand an improvement of its organisation. Another important topic to be tackled is the accuracy of the Minister’s tourism statistics, which a number of Indaba commenters referred to as not being credible, and not matching industry experience. Given the importance of tourism to the Western Cape, and the fresh marketing energy coming from Wesgro, one can only hope that the province’s new marketing body will go all out to bid for Indaba 2014, in the year that the Cape Town International Convention Centre expansion has been completed and Cape Town is the World Design Capital!

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

Cape Town Tourism downscales its marketing campaign due to funding constraints!

Last week Cape Town Tourism invited its members to attend a Marketing feedback meeting, to share with them what the organisation has done in terms of marketing since it launched its Marketing Strategy with fanfare at its AGM six months ago.  It was also an opportunity for Cape Town Tourism CEO Mariette du Toit-Helmbold to reconnect with her members, still being on maternity leave, which is due to end next month.

The highlight of the meeting was the re-introduction to Cape Town Tourism of Anton Groenewald, the new Executive Director of Tourism, Events, and Marketing at the City of Cape Town, reporting to Mayoral Committee member for this portfolio Grant Pascoe. While Mr Pascoe has been an ineffective figure head of this department since he took over this portfolio, Mr Groenewald has a good track record of a tough no-nonsense approach to the management of public tourism monies.  He worked for the City of Cape Town ten years ago, and was instrumental in the closing down of the previous Cape Town Tourism, and the creation of the new amalgamated Cape Town Tourism.  Mr Groenewald left the City of Cape Town to take over the management of the Argus Cycle Tour, and thereafter the FNB Big Walk, and was most recently working in the office of the Premier of the Western Cape, giving him a good all-round management and public service experience. He mentioned that the Cape Town Stadium is one of the key assets he will manage for the city, and is the toughest one of all.  Since May 2011 the City has been supporting Cape Town Tourism, when Councillor Pascoe was elected to the Mayoral Committee. Mr Groenewald emphasised that his department is City-focused. His role will be to enhance the co-operation and collaboration between the City and Cape Town Tourism. He will also connect with the tourism industry directly, not explaining in which regard he will do this, but if it is to receive feedback, it would be most welcome. Cape Town Tourism receives the largest chunk of the City’s R426 billion budget, at R42 million per year currently, he said.

Enver Duminy, the acting-CEO in Mrs Helmbold’s absence, shared that the past six months have been tough in terms of budget, and that they had to ‘bite the bullet’, ‘put their money where their mouth is’, and ‘think out of the box’.

Mrs Helmbold provided the background, repeating what members had heard before in that Cape Town now is positioned as the ‘City of Inspiration’, going beyond its ‘Natural Beauty‘ positioning of the past. She reminded us that the new pay-off line for Cape Town is ‘You don’t need a holiday, you need Cape Town’, which was prominently displayed in the slides and banners on the stage of the beautifully renovated Fugard Theatre.  She acknowledged that the past six months were not easy, due to the funding shortage, but she did not explain the reason for the funding problem, having been very confident at the AGM last year, when the campaign was introduced to the industry. She recapped, stating that the main marketing goal is to increase the demand for Cape Town, not only in terms of tourism, but also its business and education sectors.  She said that Cape Town had ‘nothing to be ashamed of’, and in fact is on a par with or exceeds its competitors.  She mentioned that most of our business comes from the USA, the United Kingdom, and Germany, saying that these countries were all seriously affected by the recession, showing that she is misinformed, given how well Germany is doing, and what great numbers of German tourists have come to our country in this past summer.

The Cape Town Tourism marketing campaign was designed to attract the domestic travellers to take a short break in the city, as well as attract international visitors, offering them a broader economic and business tourism proposition.  The marketing approach is three-pronged:

· Increase demand

· Increase their spend when the tourists have arrived in the city

· Capitalise on the greater number of arrivals in benefiting the tourism industry.

The ‘Inspiration’ communication campaign presents Cape Town as a thriving and vibrant city against a ‘jaw-dropping backdrop’. Mrs Helmbold admitted publicly for the first time that ‘Inspiration’ is not a unique differentiator for Cape Town. The campaign ‘juxtaposes the usual with the unusual’, and is built on ‘stories of our own people’, she said, adding that Cape Town is packaged as ‘an unexpected city wanting to be discovered’. The New7Wonders of Nature and Cape Town winning the 2014 World Design Capital bid, as well as other impressive media accolades and awards, were good for Cape Town, and the past summer was better than expected.  But she added that they had not achieved the advertising budget to ‘spearhead the full campaign’, meaning that they had to re-prioritise, with hard work lying ahead.   Mrs Helmbold took credit for the media coverage for the New7Wonders of Nature and winning the 2014 World Design Capital bid, little of which was generated by Cape Town Tourism!  The organisation has redesigned its website, and achieves 500000 visits, especially from Brazil, she said.

Velma Corcoran has been the Marketing Manager for the past eight months, and she impressed with her professional and charming presentation of the marketing activities of the past six months, and those lying ahead, designed to counter seasonality and to grow tourism demand.  She showed the audience a video entitled ‘An Unexpected Cape Town’, which mixed footage of Cape Town with grainy out-of-focus unattractive stills shots of the city, which was launched to the travel trade and media at ITB in Berlin last month.  It has been put on You Tube, and has had 30000 hits to date.  An Events Calendar was compiled, and 20000 copies printed quarterly, but its print run has not been enough, and will be increased to 50000.  Cape Town Tourism has been involved with the Volvo Ocean Race, Design Indaba, Cape Town International Jazz Festival, the Beer Festival, and the Toffie Pop Festival, mainly having a stand at each event.  At the Design Indaba, for example, they had an interactive stand, with 1000 tiles which visitors had to attach to the wall.  They also hosted YFM during the J&B Met, and 30 international journalists during the Cape Epic, the media interest being greater for this event than for the Argus Cycle Tour and Two Oceans Marathons combined, Mrs Corcoran told the audience.

To counter the perception that Cape Town is expensive, events packages have been put together with Mango and Thompsons, providing an airline ticket, accommodation, and tickets to the event at very affordable prices. At the Cape Town International airport the new campaign message is visible in the Arrivals and Departures sections.  Cape Town Tourism has also just had the campaign erected on the exterior of its offices in Burg Street. The refreshed website has simplified navigation, and the content a website visitor will see is determined by the country from which one is visiting the site.  A Cape Town Tool Kit was also developed, allowing access to an ‘on-line hub of images and itinerary ideas’, which the trade, the media and Cape Town Tourism members can access. A Brand Ambassador campaign, to teach the Cape Town Tourism staff about marketing, has also been launched.

Mrs Corcoran said that they will be going to Indaba next month, sharing space on a new Western Cape Pavilion with thirteen product owners representing expected and unexpected aspects of Cape Town. A Three Cities Alliance has been established with Johannesburg Tourism and Durban Tourism, through which they share with SA Tourism what they have achieved, and to prevent duplication of activities. Mrs Corcoran had to admit that Johannesburg Tourism was not able to fund any planned joint marketing campaigns, and therefore it left Durban and Cape Town to jointly take on an amended National Geographic campaign, and to drop the Discovery campaign, which had been announced at the AGM as the most important marketing activity its Australian marketing consultant Ian Macfarlane had organised. Mr Duminy told me at the meeting that Mr Macfarlane has completed his contract with Cape Town Tourism, while Mrs Corcoran said he is still working with them! His name was not mentioned at all during the presentation! The National Geographic campaign has the potential of exposure in 173 countries in 37 languages, with 20,3 million online unique visits, as at February 2012. National Geographic will work with Cape Town and Durban, ‘the first urban tourism collaboration of its kind in South Africa’, said the Cape Town Tourism media release about the joint campaign, which for Cape Town will feature Boulders’ Beach, Robben Island, District Six, Woodstock, Bo Kaap, Table Mountain, the city’s wine routes, as well as its design, innovation, and inspirational strengths:

· Sending ‘Digital Nomad’ Andrew Evans to Cape Town (he has just arrived) for a two week period, and he will Tweet (@Wheres Andrew) to 14000 followers and blog (receiving 2,8 million unique visitors per month) about his visit.

· A TV crew will document Andrew’s visit

· 60 second ‘vignettes’ will focus on the ‘sounds of the city’, e.g. the Noon Gun, ghoema music, with exposure to 11,4 million viewers in the UK, 3,9 million in Germany, 7,4 million in the Netherlands, and 4 million in Africa.

· Advertorials will go into the National Geographic magazines, with a joint readership of 600000, in the USA, China, India and Australia

· On-line travel guides will gain exposure for 12 months, from July 2012 – May 2013.

· An one-hour documentary about Cape Town and Durban will be featured six times on the National Geographic channel between December 2012 – June 2013.

A domestic campaign ‘Discover why Cape Town warms up in winter’ will run in airline magazines, while ads with members’ special winter offers will run on Five FM, the Sunday Times, in-flight magazines, and on the Cape Town Tourism website.  Four top international Travel Bloggers have been invited to Cape Town, and will address a travel bloggers’ conference in August.

Comparing the Marketing presentation of last week with the promises made at the AGM in October – one should question why the joint venture with the Johannesburg and Durban Tourism bodies for the then planned Discovery and National Geographic campaigns was announced at the AGM before any agreement had been signed, the organisation losing face in the inability of Johannesburg Tourism to participate in what was planned as a R24 million campaign, each city to have contributed R8 million – the planned reduction in the number of Visitor Information Centres, the planned tiered membership program, the City Brand Ambassador campaign (which was to have included Archbishop Tutu and TV and radio presenter Liezel van der Westhuizen), and the Nightsbridge accommodation booking system were not addressed in the Marketing presentation last week.

POSTSCRIPT 1/6: Other than having attended Indaba, no marketing action is visible from Cape Town Tourism over the extremely poor winter period.  The organisation has only Tweeted once about the 8 Nation Under 20 soccer tournament taking place in Cape Town now, seemingly seeing it as a non-event, as do most Capetonians and the city’s news media.  Last night the Twitter account of Cape Town reported on a  dinner at Harbour House in the V&A Waterfront, and a few days before that the husband of Velma Corcoran, the Marketing Manager of Cape Town Tourism, wrote a blogpost for the Cape Town Tourism blog about the Gugulethu Wine Show, which took place last weekend! Cape Town Tourism’s Tweets are identical tot he Tweets by its Communications Manager Skye Grove.

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