Tag Archives: summer season

International Travel: when will South African skies reopen? Low Road and High Road scenarios

 

 

The future of Tourism in our country under the Corona Virus Lockdown has been up in the sky, so to speak, intra-provincial Domestic Travel just having been opened up. No further information has been available about inter-provincial travel, nor about International Travel until now, with a Tourism Recovery Plan just having been released by the Department of Tourism.

Business Tech has summarised the South African Tourism Sector Recovery Plan: August 2020, released by the Department of Tourism, reflecting best and worst case scenarios of when Domestic and International Travel will reopen. The latter could be as early as November 2020, and as late as the start of Winter 2021! Continue reading →

Robben Island a ‘blemish’ on tourism industry, says Tourism Minister Winde!

In his media conference last week, focusing on the state of the summer season in the Western Cape, provincial Minister of Tourism Alan Winde specifically mentioned the poor performance of Robben Island, with a decrease in visitor numbers of 7,5 % compared to a year ago

Minister Winde scathingly said about Robben Island: “This World Heritage Site continues to be plagued by bad service, staff with questionable work ethic and shoddy infrastructure.  Instead of being an icon of our province and country, Robben Island has become a blemish on our tourism industry.  I have requested a meeting with the Robben Island team to discuss possible improvements“.

The Minister was reviewing the ‘summer season’, but seemed to focus on December performance in the main, excluding the months of October and November, which are the start of the summer season. These were poor summer months in Cape Town, October having the poorest accommodation occupancy in the past five years, and November up on November 2010, but nowhere near the 88 – 94 % occupancy range experienced in 2007 – 2009.  In Franschhoek occupancy was severely down for these two months, the lowest in the past five years, while Hermanus showed a small recovery.  International arrivals at Cape Town International were recorded at 86910 in December, a 17% increase on last December, the Minister said, and 337385 domestic arrivals, only a small increase.  Anyone in the tourism industry will tell the Minister that the actual experience was the opposite – a massive increase in domestic tourists was experienced over the festive season, and a massive drop-off in British tourists.  Interesting is that the total 2011 Cape Town International passenger number of 4,2 million was 4 % up on the total for 2010, the World Cup having attracted above average arrivals in June and July of that year, but had severely affected tourism during the rest of the year, meaning that any comparisons to 2010 are artificial anyway. The Minister also quoted a 19 % increase in visitors to Cape Point in December on a year ago, with 106672 visitors, while Kirstenbosch recorded a minimal growth, with 77300 visitors.

Visitor numbers for some Western Cape attractions decreased on a year ago, and the Minister said that more innovative solutions needed to be found to ‘market the province’s entire tourism offering‘.

The Minister provided the tourism focus for 2012, to achieve the goal of Tourism’s contribution of 15 % to the Western Cape economy in 2014.  For the year ahead the activities will include:

*   promoting the Western Cape in traditional and new markets, with a focus on Africa, the Middle East and the BRICS countries

*   Encouraging domestic tourism as ‘the bread and butter of our tourism industry’

*   Growing business, events and sport tourism, the planned expansion of the Cape Town International Convention Centre playing an important role in this.

*  attracting direct flights to Cape Town.

I have the highest regard for the energy of and the difference that the Minister has made since he took over the Tourism department.  Shocking however is that the Minister could have referred to an ‘exit poll‘ of 25 interviews conducted at the airport on 11 January (we criticised the irresponsible ‘market research’ conducted by his department at the end of the World Cup) and then quoting results on the basis of this irresponsible sample base to claim that the destination was felt to be safe, that visitors would return, that they had heard of Table Mountain being voted a New7Wonders of Nature, and giving their holiday experience an average score of 8,5 out of 10!  One shudders at the thought of the poor questionnaire design, given the sample size, the Minister’s department being as irresponsible as Cape Town Tourism in conducting unprofessional and irresponsible ‘market research’, in the interest of self-applause, one would suspect.

We would like to caution the Minister against over-exaggerating the state of the Tourism industry of this summer season, which firstly is not over yet (only ends at Easter), and to define the summer period correctly, and not focus on December only, or on the festive period, in stating that “the Cape’s tourism industry showed remarkable growth in 2011”, which no tourism player would agree with.  The ‘crisis’ situation of the industry during winter 2011 was well documented!  The Minister mentioned the international accolades for Cape Town, implying that these improved tourism performance, but once again all in tourism know that international visitor numbers are the lowest ever, domestic tourism being prevalent.

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

Cape Festive Season disappoints, February looks promising

I am always astounded about how our local tourism authorities make comments to the media without foundation. 

Cape Town Tourism’s latest statement refers to a nonsensical “better than average” tourist season which the Cape has just experienced over the festive season, according to the tourism body.  The CEO Of Cape Town Tourism, Mariette du Toit-Helmbold, has been at her holiday home in Pringle Bay over the festive season, according to her Tweets on Twitter, and no formal survey has been conducted amongst its accommodation, restaurant and product owner members to come to such a conclusion. 

In a report in the Cape Times, the festive season was described by Mrs Helmbold as “We have had a better than average holiday season with many accommodation establishments recording ‘higher than expected’ occupancy rates”.   It is unclear exactly how good or bad this is meant to be,  the newspaper interpreting her comments in its headline as “Cape Town had good ‘first summer season’, an exaggeration.   She described the Cape’s summer season as consisting of two parts:

*   “a domestic high point during December (and the school holidays)” – Mrs Helmbold has no clue of the reality of the tourism pattern in this quote, in that the festive season period is made up of a mix of international (German and UK in the main) and domestic visitors, who only arrive in the Cape in any large numbers from 26 December onwards, and who largely left the Cape to return home this past weekend, making it a very short festive season of two weeks.   South African visitors to the Cape were more likely to be staying with friends and family than in accommodation establishments.

*   “an international season that peaks between mid-January and the end of February” – once again, Mrs Helmbold is out of touch, in that a tourism vacuum started yesterday, and lasts for two weeks before things pick up again, and then the season will run through until Easter.    February looks well-booked ahead already, mainly by British visitors, and those attending weddings.

The Times  crows today “Hospitality industry coins it”, overexaggerating as it likes to do, but refers extensively to Durban.  The article also quotes one-month holidaying CEO of Cape Town Routes Unlimited, Calvyn Gilfellan, in stating that tourism to Cape Town increased by 3 % over an unspecified period, and that occupancy increased to 65%.  No research source for Gilfellan’s statistics is mentioned.  Gilfellan expresses his satisfaction with the occupancy rate he quotes, but the industry would not be, given that this is the prime period in which it makes its money to survive the bleak winter months.

The exceptionally strong Rand, and the increase to 20 % in the VAT rate in the UK, have been prime deterrents to the UK tourists visiting the Cape, and are the region’s largest source of international tourism.   Its decline has been extremely noticeable this summer season.   However, the extremely severe winter weather experienced in the UK and in Europe has encouraged many tourists to come to the Cape in search of warmth and sun, which they would have had to the extreme last week, when Cape temperatures rose up to 42°C in Franschhoek, for example, Cape Town not being much cooler.   The extreme heat has caused the Franschhoek water supply to be severely depleted, and citizens of the village and its visitors have been encouraged to reduce their water usage by 50 %, ironic in that the village has the largest dam in the Western Cape on its outskirts.

A blow at the start of the festive season was the snow-stuck UK visitors, who could not fly out for three or four days, costing hospitality establishments lost bookings.   Seaside towns such as Plettenberg Bay and Hermanus experienced far lower visitor numbers than in previous years, Johannesburg visitors noticeably absent in the Garden Route town for the second year running.  Last year the Johannesburgers were staying home to save money to renovate their homes for the World Cup, a dream which came true for a small minority only.  Inland towns such as Franschhoek had lots of day visitors, but reduced numbers of guests staying over in accommodation.

It has been a different type of visitor coming to the Cape this festive season, and the domestic visitors in particular appeared to be more demanding, and in some instances dishonourable in cancelling bookings in the last minute, after the rooms have been held for them for many months, without adhering to the cancellation policy, more so than in previous years.   In part this was due to the endless days of a gale-force southeaster blowing over 100 km/hr in Camps Bay, for example, followed by two days of rain over New Year, which led to some guests departing early.  

POSTSCRIPT 20/1: Following our feedback to Cape Town Tourism in this blogpost, Mrs Helmbold has adjusted her definition of the second summer peak to “our international peak tourism season is from end-January until the end of March ” (Ms Helmbold had it as running from mid-January – end February in her December media release), in the newsletter which was sent to members today.  We are delighted that we could be of service to Cape Town Tourism, whose CEO seems severely out of touch with the reality of tourism in the city she is meant to handle the marketing of!

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