Tag Archives: retail

Sweet Service Award goes to Woolworths Dash; Sour Service Award goes to TakeaLot

The Sweet Service Award goes to Woolworths Dash, the delivery service offered by Woolworths. It is similar to Checkers’ Sixty60 in promising delivery within an hour of placing the order. I placed two Dash orders in the past week, using the service for the first time, and all the products ordered were delivered, with no out-of-stocks. Ice cream ordered arrived frozen, not the case with a recent Babylonstoren ice cream delivery. The admin process of placing the order was super easy, a maximum of 30 items allowed. And the delivery took place within less than an hour of the order being placed. It will be my new Woolworths shopping method, another advantage I bring that it is delivered to my front door.

Biggest ever conference secured for Cape Town, with 15000 delegates!

imageWesgro has announced that its Cape Town and Western Cape Convention Bureau has won the bid to host the World Ophthalmology Congress, with 15000 delegates, in 2020.  The Congress will be one of the largest medical meetings in the world, and the largest ever held in Cape Town.

The value of the Congress has been Continue reading →

Should the City of Cape Town take up the fight against alleged Racism in Cape Town?

City of CT Racism a1 Whale CottageI had seen a news report about Mayor Patricia de Lille taking a stand against allegations of racism in Cape Town, and did not take any note of it, the R-word being a very sensitive one (increasingly so, I feel), which can potentially lead to abuse and other criticism.  I changed my mind when I saw a series of advertisements in the latest Atlantic Sun, and as I was on the receiving end of an extreme attack of racism in Green Point last week.

Mayor de Lille appears to have reacted to allegations by Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa that Cape Town is ‘racist‘, obviously implying that ‘White’ residents of the city are racist towards residents of other population groups in Cape Town.  She launched the ‘Inclusive City‘ campaign and ‘Cape Town against Racism’ advertising campaign on Human Rights Day on 24 March.

The advertising campaign is visible in the Cape Town freesheets, being a series of three full- Continue reading →

Is the V&A Waterfront a Tourist Trap or a Capetonian destination?

Seeing a media statement from Western Cape Minister of Tourism Alan Winde, as well as an article in Business Day about the V&A Waterfront’s ‘sharp increase in retail trade‘, make one wonder what the V&A Waterfront’s visitor numbers, said to have been measured at just over 3 million in December 2012, really represent!

When Maureen Thomson headed up marketing at the inception of the V&A Waterfront, she explained that a rubber car counter on the road near the current location of the Aston Martin showroom provided information about the number of cars entering the V&A Waterfront.  She would multiply this car count by a factor, to allow for an average number of adults and children in a vehicle, thereby calculating the visitor numbers.  The car counters are no longer to be seen, and therefore one wonders how the V&A management generates the numbers.  To be accurate, the company would have to have many more car counters, including at the BOE/Nedbank building side, near the Two Oceans Aquarium,  and One&Only Cape Town, near the shopping mall, and even at the Grand on the Beach, which is deemed to be part of the V&A Waterfront too.  The 3 million visitors to the V&A Waterfront increased by 10%, from 2,7 million in December 2011.

V&A Waterfront CEO David Green added that retail trading in December 2012 had increased by 8% relative to the same month a year prior, far above the average national retail industry growth rate.  He referred to the recent opening of Lush, Superdry, Emporio Armani, and the V&A Market on the Wharf, which had attracted a greater number of visitors.  The Business Day article highlighted what we all know – that the V&A is the ‘most popular tourist destination in South Africa’, with a mix of retail outlets, accommodation, and residential homes.  If the V&A is using hidden car counters, how can it measure how much of its ‘footfall’ is Capetonian, and how much is that of tourists.

Tourists only arrived in Cape Town in any great numbers after Christmas, which means that less than one week of December’s trade will have been tourist related, and therefore the bulk of the visitor numbers would be Capetonians shopping in the V&A Waterfront, going to see a movie, buying some food, eating at a restaurant, seeing Body Worlds, watching the Red Bull Flugtag (which caused a traffic jam in the area surrounding the V&A, and is said to have attracted 200000 Cape Town visitors on the day alone, but not mentioned by Mr Green!), checking out the newly opened Shimmi Beach Club, and doing Christmas shopping.

This could mean that the V&A Waterfront’s claim to be our country’s leading tourist attraction may be false and misleading, as it appears to attract mainly Cape Town residents, and a small number of tourists going to Robben Island, or walking through one of the V&A malls.

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