Tag Archives: New7Wonders

Table Mountain reaches New7Wonders of Nature climax, for the wrong reasons!

Just when all of Cape Town, and even South Africa, is feverishly voting to make Table Mountain a New7Wonders of Nature when voting closes today, damning articles were published yesterday in the Cape Times and The Guardian, questioning the credibility of this competition.

The Guardian wrote that the 4-year competition has become controversial, with some countries having been charged millions of dollars for the marketing use of the campaign.  In its final leg of voting, to select the top seven ‘natural landscapes and places’, a short-list of 28 includes Table Mountain, the Great Barrier Reef, the Maldives, Mount Kilimanjaro, Uluru, the Dead Sea, and the Amazon rainforest.  Charged a mere $199 registration fee to enter initially, some participating countries have since been charged exorbitant fees for a global marketing campaign, leading to the threatened withdrawal from the competition by the Maldives and the Komodo Island national park in Indonesia.  The organisers have encouraged these two attractions to remain in the competition, without any further payment.

Past CEO of Cape Town Tourism and past Mayor of Cape Town, Gordon Oliver, is quoted in The Guardian as asking: “What authority does this organisation have to determine a natural wonder as a finalist? It’s important that our authorities get the credentials of such organisations who set themselves up as the authority to decide the prominence of natural features”. The New7Wonders Foundation has denied charging excessive fees, yet it has confirmed that there are fees to be paid if the Foundation’s branding is used. A spokesperson said that the income derived from the competition funds the running of the competition and ‘maintaining a voting platform’.

In its lead story yesterday, the Cape Times wrote a damning report about the New7Wonders competition, the Foundation earning half of the R2 SMS fee per vote (potentially generating up to R1 billion, if it achieves its goal of 1 billion votes). The report also states that the campaign does not have any standing with international official or scientific bodies.  It has no relationship to UNESCO, which governs the World Heritage sites.  The article also quotes Oliver, and he asks what additional benefit the New7Wonders of Nature title would have.  Being based purely on a vote by SMS or on MXit restricts the campaign to a vote by cellphone and computer owners, and does not reflect the views of the ‘entire world’, said a UNESCO spokesperson, the organisation having distanced itself from the campaign.  The City of Cape Town confirmed that it has spent R1,7 million on advertising country-wide, to encourage South Africans to vote for Table Mountain.  The City has justified its expenditure , in that Table Mountain has made it to the finalist list of 28, from 440 initial entrants.   It also quoted research by Grant Thornton (the consultants who grossly over-estimated the economic value of the World Cup), which estimated that Cape Town specifically and South Africa generally could benefit from being named a New7Wonder of Nature, through an increase of R1,4 billion in tourism revenue.

We have seen that the accolades which Cape Town has received this year, including being named top world travel destination by TripAdvisor, have had little benefit for tourism to date, and therefore question the value of the New7Wonders competition for tourism.  Earlier this week it was announced that votes for Table Mountain were lagging badly behind those of many other finalists destinations.  It has been noticeable that Cape Town Tourism has given Table Mountain little support for its New7Wonders of Nature campaign, despite Sabine Lehmann, Table Mountain Aerial Cableway Company CEO and driver of the Table Mountain New7Wonders campaign, being a Board member of the tourism body.

Voting for the Top New7Wonders of Nature will end at 11h11 GMT (13h11 in South Africa) today, 11 November 2011, reports The Guardian.  In a Southern African Tourism Update article received last night, it is announced that the result will be announced at 21h00 in the V&A Waterfront this evening. www.new7wonders.com

POSTSCRIPT 11/11: I read the City of Cape Town’s ad properly after writing this blogpost – it features Archbishop Tutu with outstretched arms, standing on top of Table Mountain, so badly photographed by Oryx Multi Media that he is unrecognisable.  It also contains a quote by him: “I really can understand how, when God created all that there is he said, ‘I think I’ve got to do something special here’. And so God produced this fantastic gateway in the South – Table Mountain – our mountain, what a wonder!”. Over-optimistically, the ad claims boldly that becoming a New7 Wonders of Nature will ‘boost the South African economy by R1,4 billion per annum’, and that ‘11000 new jobs will be created’.

POSTSCRIPT 11/11 21h15: Table Mountain has just been announced as one of the New7Wonders of Nature, with the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil, Halong Bay in Vietnam, Iguazu Falls in Argentina, Jeju Island in South Korea, Komodo in Indonesia, and Puerto Princesa Underground River in the Phillipines.  What is extraordinary is that the organisers write that the list of seven is provisional, and subject to verification, as late as the start of 2012!

POSTSCRIPT 12/11: Tourism consultants Grant Thornton have issued a media release today, predicting that Table Mountain’s inclusion in the New7Wonders of Nature will attract 108000 new tourists per annum, and that this translates to additional tourism revenue of R 1,4 billion per year, for the next five years.

POSTSCRIPT 12/11: City of Cape Town Mayoral Committee member for Tourism Grant Pascoe has been extensively quoted in Kfm news reports this morning, stating that Table Mountain’s inclusion as a New7Wonders of Nature will boost tourism and create jobs, emphasising the latter in particular.  One hopes that the expectations he is creating will not be dashed!

POSTSCRIPT 12/11: The organisers of the New7Wonders of Nature have found a new way to generate income, and announced last night that they are starting a new campaign to choose the New7Wonders Cities, for which city nominations close on 31 December.

POSTSCRIPT 13/11: A surprise sentiment is expressed in a media release sent today by Cape Town Routes Unlimited, its CEO Calvyn Gilfellan subtly requesting lower rates for ‘ordinary people’ to go up Table Mountain: “We want to salute the thousands of ordinary South Africans who voted for Table Mountain, and whose support ensured that the city’s iconic peak was named one of the New7Wonders of Nature. These ordinary people, we believe, stand tall among the real heroes in this accomplishment. Together with the official organizing committee, they deserve our richest praise and congratulations. Now the challenge is to make Table Mountain, and the rest of Cape Town’s tourist attractions usually associated with visitors who have deep pockets, more accessible to ordinary people. After all, it was the ordinary people who stood up to vote for Table Mountain. We at Cape Town Routes Unlimited, the official destination marketing voice of Cape Town and the Western Cape, stand ready to assist with this”.

POSTSCRIPT 13/11: Earlier this week provincial Tourism Minister Alan Winde did a tandem jump from Signal Hill, taking a ‘leap of faith‘ in the vote for Table Mountain.  He said: “As nervous as I am for this jump, I am far more nervous about this vote”. The Minister stated that the win for Table Mountain would mean a 20 % increase in tourism numbers, reported the Cape Argus.

POSTSCRIPT 4/5: The status of Table Mountain as a New7Wonders of Nature has finally been confirmed, six months after Cape Town’s landmark received a provisional award, subject to a voting audit.  All seven New7Wonders of Nature have had their status confirmed.

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

Celebration: Reaching the milestone of 1000 blogposts!

Today we have reached an exciting milestone on our Whale Cottage Blog, in that this is our 1000th blogpost.  We thank our readers for their support in reading our blog, and for providing feedback, to help us improve as we developed over the almost three years. In numerology, 1000 symbolises multitude and perfection, we have learnt from Google, and we dedicate our next 1000 blogposts to be worthy of this definition.

Highlights have been making the Top 10 on the Most Controversial Blog category of the 2010 SA Blog Awards, achieving a cumulative unique readership of just under half a million in the last 16 months (about 30000 per month on average), and setting up the Food & Wine Bloggers’ Club last year.

So what have we learnt about blogging and our blog in the close to three years:

*   Restaurant news in general, and reviews and special offers specifically have attracted the greatest interest on this blog.   Our most widely read restaurant reviews, since we went onto Google Analytics 16 months ago, are for Tokara DeliCATessen, Sotana by Caveau, Gaaitjie, Pierneef à La Motte, and Duchess on Wisbeach.  It was the enjoyment of writing the review of Portofino restaurant, owned by Cormac Keane, that got us started with reviews, and we have written more than 100 reviews since then.  We have seen negative reaction to some of these, and have been banned from the Caveau group of restaurants (including Sotano), the Caviar group of restaurants (Beluga and Sevruga), Opal Lounge, and Café des Arts as a result.  Restaurants generally are poor at Social Media, and only a handful blog and/or are on Twitter.  This means that a restaurant’s information most often is provided by a blog rather than by the restaurant’s own website, which can be to its advantage or diadvantage, depending on the reviews that are listed on the first page of Google.  Other highly read blogposts are the Winter and Summer Restaurant Specials lists, the Table Mountain vote for the New7Wonders of the World, Prince Albert and Charlene Wittstock’s visit to Fresnaye in January 2009, and the Disney service training programme instituted just days before the World Cup. 

*   Tourism topics have also attracted attention, probably because there are far fewer writers on this topic.

*    Word spreads quickly if a blogpost is controversial, and brings in new readers to the blog.  Despite all allegations to the contrary, we have never written a blogpost to be controversial.  It is the reaction to it by our readers that causes the controversy. 

*   Comments have become harder to manage, and increasingly cowardly commenters write anonymously to slate the writer of the blog or the subject of a blogpost.  If one deletes such comments, one is criticised; if one publishes them, one is equally criticised!

*   While blog readers enjoy honesty, and probably read this blog for it, those that are on the receiving end of it plus their friends do react with venom, rather than using the feedback to improve their service and quality. The nastiness in ‘unSocial Media’, our new name for it, has been shocking, especially in a campaign by David Cope on Twitter, where anything goes!

*   Blogging has become very competitive, as bloggers chase readership, and want to be the first to review a new restaurant.  Achieving a first page Google listing for a restaurant, for example, can attract readership over time to the blog by new users when they Google the name of a restaurant.    

*   Readership is disappointingly low on public holidays and weekends.  Saturdays have the lowest blog reading numbers, dropping by up to half of weekday readership. Our highest readership of this blog was on 16 June 2010, during last year’s World Cup, when a tag for ‘2010’ was widely linked to this blog, attracting 9000 page views on that day alone. 

*   Although most readers are unknown to the writer, one carries a huge responsibility in shaping people’s opinions through what one writes.   We try our best to remain objective in presenting information at all times.  We have been blamed for wishing to destroy restaurants and new initiatives, yet supply news about restaurant openings and specials all the time.  Attempts were made last year by Michael Olivier (Editor of Crush!), David Cope (The Foodie Blogger) and Skye Grove (Cape Town Tourism PR Manager) to have this blog closed down.  We moved our blog hosting to America, to prevent this. 

*   Information as well as images are most likely to bring traffic via Google to the website, followed by Twitter.   Facebook is far less likely to draw traffic.

*   The weekly Sweet & Sour Service are enjoyed by readers, and many readers read the blog on a Friday, to check who has received the Sour Award, and then catch up in reading the blogposts of the pevious week.  The Spar Sweet/Limelight Sour Service Awards attracted an unusually high readership, and still do.

Looking forward, we plan to continue being honest, no matter what the cost.  We will endeavour to remain relevant, and to remain heard in the increasing Social Media ‘noise’, as more and more blogs are started, and existing ones reinvent themselves.   We will try to write shorter blogposts!   We will continue helping others to become better bloggers, and will endeavour to never stop learning from others too.

Thank you 1000 times for your readership and support!

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

Whale Cottage website receives record traffic due to social media marketing

The Whale Cottage Portfolio has increased the traffic to its website six-fold in one year, since embodying social media marketing, and has exceeded the 30 000 visitorship for the first time this month.  In 2009 a total of just fewer than 200000 unique visitors was recorded.

In January 2009 4850 unique visitors (i.e. unduplicated visitorship) had accessed the website, four months after Whale Cottage had started this blog www.whalecottage.com/blog.   At the end of December this had grown to 27 928 unique visitors.

The major impact on the growth in web traffic has been persistent blogging, with the target of one blog post published per day having been met with one or two exceptions.   Performance improved once the blog posts were posted during mid-morning, instead of just after midnight, when they had just been written.   This post is the 500th written on this WhaleTales blog.

Twitter has made a significant contribution too, with it serving as an “announcement” of what one has blogged about, providing a link to the website which can be accessed for more information, given its 140 character space restriction.   Whale Cottage has close to 700 followers, and has written more than 2 000 tweets to date.   Facebook has played only a small role in contributing to web traffic.

Cross-referencing has also assisted in the growth in Whale Cottage’s visibility, in that the social media links are part of the Whale Cottage e-mail signature; in that the WhaleTales newsletter invites its readers to follow Whale Cottage on Twitter and Facebook; and the blog has an RSS feed link, to enable regular readers to receive the latest WhaleTales blog post, and it has links to the Whale Cottage Twitter and Facebook pages.

New traffic to the website has come from restaurant reviews in particular, especially for new restaurants.  Few restaurants have websites, and do not understand about search engine optimisation.  Some Whale Cottage restaurant reviews have outperformed the restaurant websites in terms of the Google ranking on page one of a search on a specific restaurant.   Where other websites provided a link to the Whale Cottage blog in cases of restaurant controversy (e.g. Portofino, Carne), traffic to the website has been enhanced.

In 2009 the top 10 blog posts that were read most often were the following:

1.   Spar Sweet and Limelight Sour Service Awards (8 838)

2.   Petrol price drop best Christmas present for tourists (5119)

3.   Franschhoek goes Italian (Allora review) (4394)

4.   Rebel restaurateur a hit at Portofino (3 360)

5.   SA presence on top 50 restaurant list grows (2 468)

6.   Prince Albert celebrates in Fresnaye (2 276)

7.   Whales beach on Kommetjie beach (1 984)

8.   Minstrels do it for Cape Town (1 698)

9.   Table Mountain only SA New7wonders nominee (1 570)

10.  Sun Princess to visit Cape Town (1 510)

The most popular restaurants in Cape Town at the moment, based on restaurant reviews accessed on the Whale Cottage Portfolio website via Google this month, are Duchess of Wisbeach, Vaudeville and Kuzina.   

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

Table Mountain climbs to the top!

Table Mountain has made the top list of  the “mountains and volcanoes” list in the New7Wonders of Nature, and as one of the top 77 sites selected from over 261 participants from around the globe, reports News24.

Cape Town’s icon, Table Mountain, beat fellow category contenders Mount Everest, K2 and Mount Fiji in round two of the international competition that relied solely on votes from the public.   It needed to be ranked in the top 11 of its category – mountains and volcanoes – to carry on in the competition.   Other categories include seascapes, lakes, islands, ice formations, waterfalls and forests.

“We are thrilled at the enormous level of support and votes from the citizens of South Africa as well as from fans around the globe,” said Sabine Lehmann, CEO of the Table Mountain Aerial Cableway Company.

A panel of experts will select 28 finalists (four per category) later this month.  A third and final phase of voting will begin. The official New7Wonders of Nature list will be announced in 2011.

Archbishop Tutu, comedian Marc Lottering, radio DJ Natalie Becker and the Proteas cricketers have supported the drive for Table Mountain.

The campaign is run by the New7Wonders Foundation, and works to document monuments and conservation efforts worldwide.

Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com