Tag Archives: South African Tourism

South Africa on top of the world on Telegraph Ultratravel 100 best holiday destination!

South Africa has made it to the top of the Telegraph Ultratravel 100, and its announcement fortunately contains a photograph of Cape Town, an unusual dramatic one of Table Mountain covered in a thick South-Easter cloud, with Vredehoek in the foreground.   Dubai made it into second place, followed by the Maldives, Australia, and Italy.   No motivation is presented for the choice, it being based on a Telegraph reader poll, and only the country’s website link to South African Tourism is provided.   This is the second tourism award that includes our city in a week, TripAdvisor having recently announced Cape Town as the number one world travel destination in the Travelers’ Choice Destination Awards.

South Africa also features in the Top Hotel in Africa list, the Cape Grace making it to the top of this list, and La Residence in Franschhoek making third place (right), the One&Only Cape Town is ranked fourth, and The Twelve Apostles is in fifth place.  Hemingway’s Resort in Mombasa is ranked second, and is the only non-South African top hotel on this list.

Other award winners were Cunard for best cruise company, Changi in Singapore for best airport, Emirates for best airline, Virgin Atlantic for best cabin staff, Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse at Heathrow for Best Airport lounge, Hôtel de Crillon in Paris best city hotel, Shangri-La’s Barr Al Jissah in Oman is the best Beach/Resort hotel, the Four Seasons is the best luxury chain, The Carlyle in New York is the best hotel in the USA, Burj al Arab in Dubai is the best in the Middle East, and Le Touessrok the best in the Indian Ocean Islands.

It is a shame that the results have been announced at this time of the year, when the UK market is least likely to book for the coming summer, it being too far into the future, given their increasing last-minute booking pattern.

POSTSCRIPT 18/5: The Telegraph  followed up its award announcement article with the following motivation for South Africa having been voted in number one position.  Unfortunately Cape Town is not mentioned at all!:

“South Africa may be on the other side of the world from Britain, an 11-hour flight away at the southern tip of the African continent – and it may not be quite as enticingly cheap for Britons as it was (the pound now buys just 11 rand, and hotel prices are a good deal higher than they were before the Football World Cup). But the Rainbow Nation has still been voted by readers as their favourite destination – and for good reason. The country has landscapes of breathtaking beauty: raw, diverse and in the main unspoilt.

Along the coasts, some of the world’s largest sand dunes roll in from seas teeming with marine life (it is off KwaZulu Natal’s beaches that flocks of birds gather for their annual feast during the great sardine run, and whales migrate to give birth in sheltered coves). Mountain ranges thick with ancient trees are crisscrossed with waterfalls and rivers made for swimming. Game reserves as big as Wales – all baobabs, rolling grasslands and kopjies indented with rock caves decorated with ancient San art – protect the Plant Five, the Little Five and the Big Five. It’s not unknown to see lion, leopard, buffalo, elephant and rhino in one day, alongside leopard orchids, buffalo weavers, elephant grass and rhino beetles.

And the country is not just for nature-lovers, either. From the winelands in the south to the deserts bordering Namibia, there is plenty of variety to keep most holidaymakers happy: child-friendly museums, cutting-edge hotels and 17th-century Cape Dutch b&b homesteads, gourmet restaurants, game lodges housing local art, and diversions ranging from shark diving and bungee-jumping to African herbal spas. Best thing of all? It is all reassuringly familiar, despite being on a different continent. The people of South Africa not only speak the same language as we do (in addition to 10 others) and drive on the same side of the road, but, after years of isolation during the era of apartheid, relish overseas visitors. In this relatively new tourist destination, even the passport officers welcome new arrivals with a smile.

As a finalist for this award, South Africa had plenty of competition: Dubai, with its five-star hotels; the Maldives, with its idyllic island life; Australia, with its open bush, wine and fine tucker; and Italy, with its historical and cultural allure. Having won, the Rainbow Nation should dust off its vuvuzelas. In spite of its troubles, it is now among the winners of an Ultra – an achievement that really is worth trumpeting about.”  

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

South Africa scores R30 million from online World Cup coverage

The World Cup was an unprecedented success, in terms of its organisation and the tremendous goodwill it caused amongst locals as well as international soccer fans.  In addition, and having a longer lasting effect, is that the above-the-line media as well as social media impact of the World Cup set new records for this event, not just for South Africa, but for the soccer body FIFA too.

 

*   3,2 million soccer fans attended the 32 matches around the country, and about one third of the tickets were bought by about 350000 international visitors – the word-of-mouth feedback to their friends and family is the most credible marketing South Africa could wish for, and is free-of-charge!

*   Highest TV coverage ever was achieved, and reached an unprecedented 700 million viewers for the Final alone 

*   The online coverage was the most dramatic, because much of it was a new way of communicating to soccer fans and about the World Cup, reports the Weekend Argus:

     +   BBC News online ran 120 stories, and the Washington Post 48 stories during the World Cup, both being influential online newspaper services

      +   The FIFA.com website had 150 million unique visitors during the World Cup, three times as many as in 2006. 

       +   South Africa’s unique identity, personality and character was woven into the soccer reporting by the international online media, and so the country’s ability to manage the tournament, and our unique vuvuzela and makarapa became world terms on blog posts, Twitter, comments to blog posts and online articles, and on Facebook.

       +   The value of the online coverage was just short of R30 million, based on 148 million persons communicating about South Africa in the context of the World Cup online, calculated by BrandsEye, a local online agency.   This value was created by soccer fans and the media for free, and did not cost South African Tourism a cent in coverage!

       +   Just more than half of the mentions (58%) about the country came from the USA, a surprisingly small 10% from the UK, and only 8% from South Africa.

       +   The mentions were analysed in terms of degree of positivity, and 55% were “strongly positive”, 40% were factual or neutral in terms of content, and 5% were negative.

       +   Twitter played an important role in spreading the word about South Africa, not only via celebrity (e.g. Paris Hilton has more than 2 million followers) and soccer star Tweets, but also Twitter accounts with huge numbers of followers (e.g. Sports Illustrated, with close to 285000 followers).

In June traffic to the Whale Cottage website almost trebled to 129000 unique visitors, due to the World Cup, but also due to the engagement of Prince Albert and Charlene Wittstock, as the blog contains a post about the couple attending a New Year’s party in Fresnaye 18 months ago. 

It has also been reported that the great World Cup coverage for South Africa has raised the bar for the marketing of Brazil.  The 2014 World Cup host country has started its marketing already, by launching an international marketing campaign four years ahead of its tournament, a first in the history of the FIFA World Cup, says Dr Niklaus Eberl, an internal branding consultant for the German and South African World Cups (no doubt for Brazil to come too!).

In Business Day Dr Eberl was reported as saying the the Brazilian tourism agency Ambratur has launched an ambitious marketing strategy, which plans to double the number of tourists to Brazil (to 10 million per year, the same target as that of South Africa) and treble the value of tourism in the next ten years.  The “Brazil is calling you” campaign aims to reach 400 million consumers in 100 countries, with a budget of $30 million this year alone.   Brazil’s President Lula da Silva said: “The success of our African brothers represents a tremendous challenge to the Brazilian people.  We are learning from them to ensure that we will present a World Cup as beautiful as 2010”.   The Brazilian marketing budget is said to make that of South Africa look like “small change”!   Brazil is planning to spend five times the R30 billion of South Africa on its infrastructure.  The country also wants to equal or better South Africa’s 90 % score from FIFA for its handling of the World Cup.

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

Tourism season not so festive for the Cape

“Cape Town tourism plummets” was the dramatic headline of EyeWitnessNews yesterday, reflecting the decline in tourism this season so far, particularly in the Western Cape interior.

The report quotes Cape Town Routes Unlimited, which it mistakenly refers to as “Cape Town’s official tourism marketing body”, as admitting that “the Mother City is experiencing a dismal year, with the number of visitors significantly lower than in previous years.”   According to the report, Cape Town Routes Unlimited CEO Calvyn Gilfellan has visited Western Cape tourism districts, and received feedback of varying tourism numbers, especially along the Garden Route.

The Whale Cottage Portfolio can also confirm this scenario, with November being a poor month in Franschhoek (32 % occupancy – normally this month is close to fully booked), in Hermanus (66 % occupancy – usually close to fully booked), and in Plettenberg Bay (28 %).   Only Whale Cottage Camps Bay in Cape Town held its own with an occupancy in November of 88%, yet down from 96 % last year.

The festive season period is almost fully booked at the Whale Cottages in Camps Bay and in Plettenberg Bay, the cricket match in Cape Town in early January being a big boost for Camps Bay bookings.   Hermanus is seeing the poorest bookings over the festive season, despite the area having a new Destination Marketing Organisation, but which is just not bringing in the bookings.

South African Tourism’s Global Manager: Product, Hanneli Slabber, states in her Christmas message that this “..has been one of the industry’s toughest years”.  She encourages emphasis on Service Excellence, in that it is the little touches that makes visitors return to a destination and a tourism product.  “What our visitors want in 2010 is something their money can’t buy.  It’s called Service Excellence – and it comes from being professional at what you do, competent in how you do it, and treating people with genuine warmth and respect when you do it” she writes.

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