Tag Archives: National Geographic

So what impressions did Cape Town Tourism’s international travel bloggers make on Cape Town?

We have seen in the past that Cape Town Tourism likes to blow its own trumpet, so when we received the media release on 31 July to brag about how it ‘uses Crowd-sourcing to clock over 13 million impressions on Twitter‘, it attracted interest.  It appears that it exaggerated the impact of the four international travel bloggers who were invited by Cape Town Tourism as iAmbassadors to spend a week in the city, and to share blogging tips at the Getaway Travel Blog Conference.

On Sunday a week ago (29 July) Cape Town Tourism announced a one hour brainstorm (‘crowdsourcing‘) via Twitter from 7 – 8 pm, using the hashtag #LoveCapeTown, requesting suggestions for what the four international bloggers should see and do while in Cape Town. Six questions were asked, relating to typical Cape Town food to eat, places to visit, adventure activities to participate in, places to learn more about the city’s history, people watching spots, and favourite hidden gems.  The Cape Town media release claimed that in a 24 hour period #LoveCapeTown generated ‘1500 Tweets, 13521392 impressions and reached an audience of 623041 followers’. On its blog three days later, Cape Town Tourism grew its claim to ‘4000 #LoveCapeTown tweets were sent. As many as 800000 unique Twitter users were reached by the hashtag and 30-million tweet impressions were achieved’ in the one week period.

Not having heard of a Twitter ‘impression‘ measurement before, I Googled the term.  It describes the cumulative total of followers of persons who use a hashtag (or specified Twitter address) multiplied by the number of Tweets per Twitter address that used the hashtag.  The measurement does not deduct the duplication of the same followers on more than one Tweeter’s list. It also does not measure the actual readership of the Tweet(s), only measuring the potential readership.  Newman PR company, one of the oldest in America, wrote on its blog about the dilemma of presenting statistics to its clients, and came to the conclusion that ‘Twitter Impressions can impress, but actually mean little‘, and decided against presenting this information to its clients.  ScoopDog’s Blog suggested that ‘Twitter reach calculations should be in the 10 – 12% of a follower list’, according to a Harvard study.  The writer calls for reliable benchmark information on measuring performance on Facebook and Twitter, and says that more meaningful measurements should be sales and lead generation.  Stanzr Blog says that only ‘Twitter can verify what users actually are online and observing Tweets‘, and that no hashtag measurement company can verify how many users were actually impressed with a hashtag or a Tweet.  LoCulReign wrote :“While there are many standardized metrics such as follower, mentions, or even impressions, these metrics are not the end-all answer to the broader question (what is the value of social media), they are simply a slice of the pie. There are many intangible benefits of social media, such as building strong brand awareness or reputation that cannot be measured by total brand mentions or the bit.ly clickthrough rate in a week.”

Not being privy to how Cape Town Tourism generated its statistics (no source is quoted in the media release), we used the Hashtracking.com service to measure the power of #LoveCapeTown in the 24 hours prior to midday on Saturday 4 August.  In this period 483 Tweets generated a total of 461399 followers and 2,4 million impressions.   This measurement tool shows the source of the top 10 impressions, and 84% of this top 10 list generated just over 2 million of the impressions, being the four international travel bloggers, Cape Town Tourism CEO Mariette du Toit-Helmbold, Cape Town Tourism Communication Manager Skye Grove, Cape Town Tourism, blogger conference organiser Getaway, the @CapeTown aggregator for all mentions of Cape Town, and SA Tourism’s @gotoSouthAfrica. Skye Grove is the Cape Town Tourism Tweeter, so she Tweets the same Tweets on both accounts, usually re-Tweeted by her boss Mrs Helmbold too.   It is safe to say, from the Tweets in the timeline, that the bulk of the impressions were Cape Town-based, giving locals a tremendous feel-good about their home city. American and Australasian Twitter followers of the international bloggers may have been asleep at the time of the Tweet-up, and weekend days are poor Twitter days anyway.  Of the 11 #LoveCapeTown Tweets printed out alongside the measurement on HashTracking.com, six were spam accounts, showing that potentially #LoveCapeTown Tweets could not have had more than 600000 impressions (instead of the claimed 11 million) last Sunday!  To bring the measurement of ‘impression’ closer to home, we ran @WhaleCottage on Hashtracking.com at the same date and time, and found that one Tweet (“Tourism is the bread and butter of economy, says Western Cape Minister of Tourism @AlanWinde”), which was re-Tweeted three times, had achieved 449700 impressions alone.

Mrs Helmbold enthused about the success of the Twitter campaign, saying that it ‘truly let Capetonians ‘sell’ their own city and it added instant authenticity to our campaign’. She added that so many suggestions were received that it proved that tourists need more than one week to visit Cape Town.  The numerous suggestions made to the international bloggers via the Twitterthon were not recorded anywhere for future visitors to Cape Town, other than some having been recorded in the media release, showing how short-lived Twitter information is.

During the Getaway Travel Bloggers Conference on Saturday, one of the speakers (@TravelDudes) quantified the value of the 24 hour Twitter coverage at €56564, which was proudly re-Tweeted by Cape Town Tourism.  Again, there is no known standard to quantify the value of a Tweet or an impression. Weird is that the hashtag for the Bloggers Conference changed to #gtbc, losing #LoveCapeTown in all Tweets from Saturday onwards, despite Cape Town Tourism having been a sponsor of the Conference.

In the week that the international bloggers spent in Cape Town, disappointingly little was written about Cape Town by the bloggers:

*  Keith Jenkins of velvet escape wrote two blogposts last week, one called ‘Iconic Cape Town view’, just containing a photograph of Table Mountain, with a link to a blogpost ‘Ten things to do in Cape Town’ which he wrote in 2009!  The other was written on his arrival, requesting participation in the #LoveCapeTown Twitterthon. He Tweeted mainly about Cape Town in the week that he was here, and it was noticeable that he used other hashtags liberally in his non-Cape Town Tweets.  He was good at responding to Tweets including his handle, and re-Tweeting. This was his fourth visit to Cape Town, and he called the city his ‘second home‘.  He has 16069 Twitter followers.

*   Wild Junket’s Nellie Huang wrote ‘We’re off to Cape Town, South Africa’ two weeks ago, inviting suggestions of things to see and do in Cape Town, and writing that she would be ‘cycling through Kayalitsch‘ (sic), hiking up Table Mountain, and going on a wine tour to Steenberg.  During the week she wrote two blogposts, one being about Table Mountain, which was a collection of photographs taken from the mountain, including onto Camps Bay, and the other blogpost was a collection of photographs of the villa in which the four bloggers were accommodated in Camps Bay.  She has previously visited the city, says she loves Cape Town, and said that ‘I wish that I could live here’.  She has 21591 Twitter followers, and was an active Tweeter about Cape Town in the past week, creating dialogue.

*   Traveldudes‘ Melvin Böcher is an occasional blogger, it would appear, not having posted more than four blogposts per month, but more commonly only one per month on average. He has not blogged since his arrival in Cape Town.  On his website he carries guest posts about various aspects of Cape Town, none written by him.  He has 86814 Twitter followers.  He is an über-Tweeter, obviously pre-scheduling his Tweets, so that his few Cape Town Tweets were largely lost in his daily average of 50 Tweets about a multitude of international destinations.  Noticeable was that he too is a heavy user of hashtags in every Tweet, using non-Cape Town ones for Tweets about other destinations, which must confuse his followers, in receiving so many Tweets about diverse destinations every few minutes every day.

*   Matt Long of Landlopers wrote about his forthcoming trip three weeks ago, and also requested input to things to do in Cape Town.  He has not written about Cape Town in the past week. He said he did not know much about the city before his arrival (odd for a travel writer), therefore coming in ‘blind’. He writes for Lonely Planet too. He has 16071 Twitter followers.  Similarly to Melvin Böcher, he generates about 50 Tweets per day, about a diversity of destinations and they too are heavily (non-Cape Town) hashtagged, once again causing confusion amongst his followers.  Few of his Tweets were about Cape Town in the past week. He repeats links to his blogposts and to a competition a number of times per day, one notices in his Tweets. Odd is that he has protected his Tweets, and one must request permission to follow him!

In the past week, the four travel writers were taken to Gansbaai for shark cage diving and seeing whales as well, hiked up and down Table Mountain (Matt Böcher undiplomatically said the ‘gondola was not working’ when he should have been told that it was closed for its annual maintenance), went to Robben Island, cycled through a township, visited Cape Point, Boulder’s Beach, Hout Bay, The Fringe creative precinct which included a stop at Charly’s Bakery, learnt to cook curry in Bo-Kaap, tasted wine at Groot Constantia (they do not appear to have got to Steenberg), visited some unnamed ‘cocktail spots‘, went on a Jazz Safari, visited The Castle, had dinner at Reuben’s at the One&Only Cape Town, had a drink at the Planet Bar, had a braai at the villa in which they stayed, ate at (unknown) Ethopian restaurant ‘Bebie Rosie’, and had a pizza at Jason’s.   What was noticeable was that the program for the travel writers’ visit to Cape Town was pre-planned, as was evident from Nellie Huang’s pre-visit blogpost, and therefore the Twitterthon on 30 July, billed as being a list of suggestions for the writers to experience whilst in Cape Town, was a con! Predictably they saw the usual tourist highlights of Cape Town, and their eagerly anticipated highlight of paragliding off Lion’s Head was cancelled due to the bad weather yesterday.  Yesterday afternoon three of the travel writers left for Johannesburg, on their way to Botswana today.

At a cocktail event held on Thursday, invited guests were shown the new one minute video made for Cape Town Tourism by National Geographic called ‘The Sounds of the City’, showing a young girl enjoying different parts of the city, including Bo Kaap, Greenmarket Square, the ocean, penguins, the V&A Waterfront, the view from Signal Hill (but not showing the iconic Cape Town Stadium) and the view over Table Bay from the top of Table Mountain.  The sound effects, meant to be the theme of the video, are a vibey rap song ‘Cape Town’, into which are woven the sounds of seagulls, the ocean, lots of minibus taxi hooting, drumming, and a marimba band.  As a Capetonian I missed the Cape Town sounds of Friday afternoon mosque prayers, the sound of the South Easter, the foghorn at Mouille Point, and the ship’s horns entering/leaving Cape Town harbour.  The YouTube video only has 320 views to date.

It appears that Cape Town Tourism wildly exaggerated the impact of its Twitterthon, and the stature of the international travel ‘bloggers’, who appear to be digital travel editors rather than bloggers, rarely blogging!  Mrs Helmbold clearly had not done her homework about her panel of visitors’ blogging habits, or lack of. Interesting is that no blog readership figures were provided for the international visitors, and that their standing was measured only in terms of Twitter following, yet Cape Town Tourism wrote on its blog the following exaggerated and unsubstantiated claim that the writers ‘reach millions of readers each month through their own online channels’!  No readership statistics are quoted on any of the four writers’ websites, nor did Cape Town Tourism divulge this in the run up to the Conference, only quoting Twitter follower statistics.   One does not know how much Cape Town Tourism paid to bring the international travel writers to Cape Town, and how it will ultimately measure the value of the impressions they made for the Cape Town tourism industry, in translating into creating awareness, leading to enquiries, and generating bookings!

POSTSCRIPT 11/8: The danger of sponsoring travel writers became evident today, when Melvin Böcher of Traveldudes Tweeted a link to blogger Michael Hodson’s blogpost ‘New 7 Wonders of the World: the scam behind the sham’, knocking the New7Wonders of Nature competition, and billing it as a money-making scam.  In Hodson’s blogpost he slates most of the Top 7 list, including our Table Mountain, saying it isn’t even a ‘Top 7 mountain…let alone a top 7 natural wonder’, and he has a beautiful photograph of the mountain in his blogpost.  It raises the question of the loyalty one would expect from guest who was brought to Cape Town, and his services paid for.  The blogpost was written by Hodson on 14 November last year, and even more odd that Böcher should Tweet the link nine months after it was written, and less than two weeks after he himself had hiked up Table Mountain!

POSTSCRIPT 15/8: Last night we received an e-mail from Anton Groenewald, Executive Director of Tourism, Events, and Marketing at the City of Cape Town, the funders of Cape Town Tourism.  Initially I offered him anonymity, in recognition of the support I had received from him, but he wrote an e-mail this morning, saying that he is happy for it to be made public. This is what he wrote last night: ‘Thanks very much for an insightful analysis and critique of the bloggers visit. I share much of your scepticism in regards to this issue’.

POSTSCRIPT 15/8: Cape Town Tourism issued another media release to justify the #LoveCapeTown Twitter campaign today, and one can assume that it is meant as a response to this blogpost (they have not posted a comment to it on this blog). In the media release they have changed their tune, admitting that there is no standard way to measure the success of Social Media marketing: ” Whilst the #LoveCapeTown hashtag ultimately clocked up over 36 million Twitter impressions, it is still difficult to measure the impact of these statistics. Says Du Toit-Helmbold; “We know that this campaign was a success from many points of view. It was instant – and yet there are still many more blogs and tweets that will follow as a result to ensure maximised exposure and reach for Cape Town. It also crossed over onto many other platforms (blogs, Twitter, facebook, Instagram, Pinterest) as today’s social media influencer is multi-channelled. The campaign was followed with interest by traditional media, but the biggest success of this campaign was the citizen engagement it led to. For us, it proves that often we should just initiate and guide the conversation, setting up platforms where it can unfold. Cape Town knows how to sell itself!”

In terms of actual return on investment, Cape Town Tourism agrees that there is no one reliable tool to measure the value of social media, but there is no denying the importance of digital media marketing. Says Du Toit-Helmbold; “We see this campaign as one in which we piqued interest and that was our intention. Now we have to convert that interest into a community that can help us drive more awareness and ultimately conversion and more visitors to Cape Town. People do not just arrive in a destination; they do research beforehand and social media – as an extension of word of mouth – is influencing more and more travel decisions. We are acutely aware that word of mouth through social media is the most powerful tool for any destination marketer today and if we can continue to mobilise more local voices to help promote Cape Town through their own on-line networks of friends and followers, we have a winning recipe. Our work in digital media marketing is attracting global attention and we will be presenting case studies at the forthcoming World Travel Market in London.”

POSTSCRIPT 27/8: @Traveldudes has close to 90000 followers today, yet the Klout score of Social Media influence is only 67 out of 100 (ours is 65, by comparison).  This begs the question of the value of a high number of Followers. At the Blog Conference Klout was not mentioned as a measurement of Blogging or Tweeting success.

POSTSCRIPT 29/8:  A Tweet by Melvin Böcher about his #TOTT (Travel Talk on Twitter) hashtag success took me to his seldom-written Traveldudes blog, and a blogpost about the success of the hashtag.  It makes for fascinating reading, in that he bragged on 19 July already (i.e. 10 days before coming to Cape Town) about the hashtag having created 30 million impressions, exactly the same figure Cape Town Tourism used in its media release a few days later about their misleading one hour #LoveCapeTown Tweet-Up, which included Böcher!  The question style of asking five questions is the same Böcher uses, which means that he organised the Tweet-Up and how it was run, and calculated the ‘impressions’. It explains why he has taken exception to this blogpost, and his childish reaction to it.  Ironic however is by his own admission that ‘impressions’ mean nothing! “Every single week #TTOT reaches up to more than 2 Million users on Twitter and creates with the #TTOT hashtag around 30 Million impressions! Just to get you back on the floor… If someone tries to tell you what this number is worth…  It’s worth NOTHING! :). Travelers join events like #TTOT, as they are looking to socialize with each other, not to get a special deal for this or that. It’s about the fun sharing experiences and everybody can be part of it. And the best is… For Free!“

POSTSCRIPT 30/8: In News24 yesterday, an interview which they had conducted with Melvin Böcher of Traveldudes was published.  He clearly is very taken with the quantification of the value of Tweets and blogging, something we have not seen quantified by anyone to date!  He answered about the quantification in reply to a question about the biggest challenge he has had to overcome since starting his website: “The biggest challenge is, that people still don’t have a clue about the real value blogging, social media, or the internet in general provides. Who would have guessed that a single tweet of mine would be valued at more than EUR 160 – right!? Or that I can provide a ROI of over EUR 20 000 when promoting a destination in 5 days via writing about it on Traveldudes.org. But this problem is a general one, which all magazines, newspapers and bloggers have”. One wonders what he charged Cape Town Tourism for his services.

POSTSCRIPT 21/9: In a Mail & Guardian article written by Mrs Helmbold herself today, she refers to the four international ‘travel bloggers’ as ‘Travel Twits’, an absolute insult!

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

Cape Town Tourism encourages tourists to swim with sharks! Is National Geographic campaign already a flop?

One wonders what is going on at Cape Town Tourism and its marketing of Cape Town, the little that is done! With shock we saw an advertisement for Cape Town on the National Geographic website, alongside the blogposts which their ‘Digital Nomad’ Andrew Evans had written while he was in Cape Town, inviting tourists to the city to ‘Swim with sharks’.  Not only was this advertisement irresponsible in general, but in extremely poor taste, having been posted just days after champion Camps Bay bodyboarder David Lillienfeld was fatally attacked by a Great White shark at Kogel Bay, in False Bay, on 19 April.  The advertisement was Cape Town branded.

The shark attack caused a huge outcry, in that the Kogel Bay beach does not have sharkspotters (Muizenberg, Fish Hoek, St James, Kalk Bay, and Noordhoek have them), and in that National Geographic was implicated in the shark attack, in that Chris Fisher, a documentary maker for the TV channel, had been filming ‘Shark Men in False Bay’, having received a permit allowing ‘chumming’, luring sharks with a mix of fish and oil, to the boat. The permits issued to the film team were withdrawn immediately after the shark attack, but have since been reissued, on condition that the team’s vessel Ocearch only operates near Gansbaai and in False Bay, and that a maximum of 12 sharks may be tagged, reported iol.co.za.  Reuters quoted contradictory research about the effect of chumming on shark attacks. False Bay has 260 Great White Sharks, according to shark scientist Alison Kock, reported the Cape Times. Shark cage diving, mainly talking place in the Gansbaai area, is also blamed for a greater number of shark attacks. The Western Cape provincial government is to hold a special public hearing about shark research and tourism shortly, reports the Cape Argus.

The visit by blogger and Tweeter Andrew Evans kicked off a multi-prong year-long National Geographic marketing campaign jointly sponsored by Cape Town Tourism and Durban Tourism.  No budget figures for the campaign are available, which includes coverage on National Geographic TV, as well as in the National Geographic magazines in limited countries such as China and India.

Readers of the National Geographic blog were invited to ‘follow our Digital Nomad through South African cities‘, and Andrew spent just over a week in Cape Town, from 16 – 25 April, Tweeting his way around the city (he has just more than 15000 followers on Twitter, not an extraordinary number for his international exposure, and surprisingly only about 2300 Facebook likes). Andrew documented his impressions and experiences in only five blogposts about Cape Town. Four blogspot were very short, and the last one was entitled ‘My Cape Town Favorites’ , containing more information, and sharing information about accommodation, restaurants, and sights he experienced in Cape Town.

The restaurant section intrigued me, and it was disappointing to read where Andrew had eaten: Mama Africa; Kalkys; Bread, Milk and Honey; Lola’s, Eastern Bazaar, Noon Gun, Two Oceans, and the Cape Royale, mediocre restaurants at best. The best of the collection was the Planet Restaurant at the Mount Nelson Hotel, an Eat Out Top 20 Restaurant.  Andrew did not eat at Cape Town’s (and South Africa’s) best restaurant (The Greenhouse) or at the Test Kitchen (best chef).  Just after his visit, Chef Luke Dale-Roberts’ The Test Kitchen restaurant made 74th place on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants! We wrote a comment about this on the blogpost, and Andrew replied, writing that his meal at Planet was a memorable one.  We then asked via a further comment how he chose the restaurants he went to, Cape Town Tourism clearly guiding him about this! To our surprise, the comments and Andrew’s reply have since been deleted, probably at the insistence of Cape Town Tourism!  We note that a correction we offered about the ‘Signature (sic) Hill’ winery Andrew wrote about has been corrected!  Despite a Cape Town Tourism media release announcing that Andrew would also visit Robben island and the three wine routes in Cape Town, these attractions were not included in his visit. But he did go up Table Mountain, play with penguins at Boulder’s Beach, kayaked around Cape Point with Lewis Pugh, and visited the Aquarium, Kirstenbosch, Woodstock, Bo Kaap, District Six, Noordhoek Beach, Camps Bay, the V&A Waterfront, Long Street, Muizenberg, and Kalk Bay.  His experiences were mainly Tweeted with a photograph of each of his tourist destinations.  Although Andrew called for recommendations of places to see and visit in Cape Town, and receiving many suggestions, he did not appear to make time to visit any of the more unusual attractions in the city and in surrounding towns and villages.  Surprising is that Andrew did not reply to any of the travel suggestions he received, Cape Town Tourism Communications Manager Skye Grove responding to the more controversial comments (and clearly deleting those that she did not like!).

Andrew spent a week in Durban in the second half of the joint campaign with Durban Tourism, and now advertisements for Durban strongly brand the city (“Durban: The warmest place to be”) on the National Geographic blog, the advertisement and a banner for Durban running alongside the Cape Town blogposts by Andrew, which does not make marketing sense at all!  While Andrew was in Durban he made a fatal error in a racist Tweet “Black woman visiting from Jo’burg & Muslim woman watch the sunrise & the surfers at #Durban beach”. He also Tweeted about OR Thambo being notorious for theft out of luggage (ouch!) – most incoming international flights are via this airport, so the Tweet is damaging to South African tourism in general, hardly what Cape Town Tourism or Durban Tourism should be paying National Geographic for!

The multi-million Rand National Geographic marketing campaign for Cape Town and Durban has not commenced on a good note. One must question the wisdom of two (competing) cities sharing a marketing campaign (as bad as Cape Town Routes Unlimited marketing ‘Cape Town & Western Cape’ as one brand), and why Andrew’s often naive content was not checked for the many mistakes he has made, reflecting badly on our city, the premier tourism brand of South Africa!  One questions what impact this campaign has had for Cape Town, in a period when Cape Town’s tourism businesses are facing a deadly quiet second half of May, as well as June and July! Cape Town Tourism’s shark swimming advertisement is in poor taste and must be scrapped immediately!

POSTSCRIPT 11/5: The Cape Argus has reported that the public hearing will be held on Tuesday.

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

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

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