Tag Archives: S A Tourism

Cape Town tops in Africa

Cape Town has been named Africa’s leading destination for the second year running by the World Travel Awards, and the award was accepted by the City of Cape Town and Cape Town Tourism jointly.

 

Cape Town Tourism was named a finalist in the Best Tourism Organisation and Best Marketing Campaign in Africa categories.   The Mount Nelson Hotel was named the Best Hotel in Africa, SAA best airline in Africa, OR Thambo International as best African airport, Europcar the Leading Car hire company in Africa, Cape Town as leading Port in Africa, and S A Tourism was named as Africa’s leading Tourist Board. 

 

The winners of the World Travel Awards are voted for by travel agents.   The awards have been running for 16 years.

‘Proudly un-South African’ S A Tourism

It has been confirmed by S A Tourism that it is using an Australian call centre to update the National Tourism Product Database.

In a call to William Price, Global Head of e-Marketing at S A Tourism, he spoke openly and honestly about the problems the tourism marketing company had in finding a South African company that could accurately verify the contact details of tourism products in South Africa.  S A Tourism wants to add the details of all tourism products onto its new website, which it is launching at Indaba in May.

It then appointed Yodel, a call centre company started by South Africans in Australia and New Zealand, who are now setting up a branch office in South Africa.  The call centre company is more efficient and less expensive in offering its service than the South African call centres it had used previously, Price says.

Price had e-mailed “tourism product partners” last month, to state that “South African Tourism and Google have partnered to do a complete clean-up of the National Tourism Product Database.”   The letter did warn one to not “be alarmed by the Aussie accent when you get the phone call.”

Since the letter was sent, product owners have received numerous calls from persons with heavy American and other accents (none from Australia though), claiming to be from South African Tourism in Randburg.   As they struggle badly with some brand names ‘ e.g. ‘Whale Cottage Franschhoek” it is immediately clear that they are not from this country.   Every caller that was asked in which country the call centre was based, put down the phone without answering.   The most recent caller was honest enough to say that it is based in the Philippines!

Price also explained in the call made to him (two e-mails were sent to and a telephonic message left for him, without any response) yesterday that his organisation is looking to assist small product owners who do not have a website.  In conjunction with Google, such product owners will be given a free website and domain for three months, and S A Tourism has set aside a budget of R 500 000 for this.

Vodacom is also looking to offer new product owners connectivity services.

It will be interesting to see what level of success the call centre will have, as the initial reaction one has to someone claiming to call from “S A Tourism in Randburg” with a heavy non-South African accent is one of disbelief.   Even harder is being able to understand the strongly-accented call centre staff, something one normally has a problem with if the calls come from local call centres!

“Share, innovate, inspire” wine conference theme

A comprehensive two-day conference on wine tourism will be held at the Vineyard Hotel in Cape Town on 21and 22 July, with the theme of “Share, innovate, inspire”.

Trends and best practices in the $15 billion global wine tourism industry will form the spotlight of the 2009 South African Wine Tourism Conference, with topics including the proposed new liquor law, e-marketing and blogs,  wine festivals, an overview of Australia’s wine tourism strategy, the lessons that the German wine and tourism industry learnt during the 2006 World Cup, customer attraction and retention, responsible tourism, and creating tourism brands.   

Speakers will include representatives of leading wine farms, tourism industry bodies and marketing specialists.

S A Tourism goes Down Under

S A Tourism is re-developing its website www.southafrica.net, and the government tourism promotion agency, together with Google, is doing a “complete clean-up of the National Tourism Product Database” says an e-mail sent to tourism players yesterday.

Sent by William Price, the Global Head: eMarketing of S A Tourism, the letter encourages co-operation to help to update each tourism player’s information, particularly in the interest of 2010.   The e-mail contains an 8-digit verification code, which must be requested of the S A Tourism representative when he/she calls.  

What is most astounding is that the letter says”….and don’t be alarmed by the Aussie accent when you get your phone call.”    Whale Cottage was called by a man with an American accent earlier this week, requesting update information.    The immediate question to the caller was to understand why a South African tourism agency would use a non-South African company to update the S A Tourism website.  The caller could not explain this.  This reply, plus the poor ability to understand his American-accented questions, made Whale Cottage decline the rest of the call.

The e-mail promises that the website will showcase the tourism products as follows:

  • “Showcase relevant product on nearly every page of the site
  • Offer an upgraded product search by location and category
  • Display your establishment’s details with photo, logo, description, rates and contact information
  • Urge and allow the users to send you an enquiry from your product information page
  • Give users the opportunity to attach your information to their trip planner wish list! ” 

    •  

    It will be interesting to see what degree of co-operation S A Tourism will receive for the tourism information update, given that the e-mail with the verification code has to kept until the call is received.  No date for the call is specified.   

    Whale Cottage has written to S A Tourism, to check why a South African company cannot update the tourism product database.