tour guides | WhaleTales Blog by Chris von Ulmenstein

I missed the Cape Town Tourism member presentation by Mary Tebje, Cape Town Tourism’s Trade and Press representative in London, in Cape Town in April, and was alerted to it by Commenters to our blogpost about Cape Town Tourism’s depressing forecast for the tourism industry for the next three years.

The reality is that the UK market, the largest source market for Cape Town, is severely depressed, and this is already making itself felt in extremely poor forward bookings from that country. The high unemployment, increased air passenger duty, fuel price increases, a VAT increase, and an unheard of inflation rate at 4,5 % have created ‘a pessimism not seen since the 1940’s’, Ms Tebje said. This has led to the ‘staycation’, with the British being forced to holiday at home.

The Cape Town Tourism summary of Ms Tebje’s talk is thin, but the bottom-line is that Ms Tebje recommended that tourist packages should be put together for the UK market, and should certainly include cultural experiences. Guests would want to book a number of activities in all-inclusive packages, so that they did not have to worry about extras to pay for whilst on holiday. This requires a collaborative approach between accommodation providers and tour guides. In a discussion at the meeting, the ‘township tour and gum-boot dancing routine’ were felt to not be a worthy representation of Cape Town’s culture.

Miss Tebje profiled the typical UK traveller as being the ‘over 50s market’, a booming one, which has money, and is largely interested in cultural experiences. Day trips are popular, and should include food and wine. “Teach them to braai”, she recommended, as the UK visitors love to bring home their newly acquired culinary skills, and to talk about their cuisine experiences. In 2010, 450000 tourists visited Cape Town from the UK, and a quarter of these came to visit friends and family. Yet Ms Tebje painted a contradictory picture of the UK visitor, saying that they spend three hours per day in the sun, and an hour and a half in the bar, according to a survey undertaken by TripAdvisor! “In fact, we are so busy boozing and bathing that Brits often neglect cultural pursuits, rating the worst in Europe for museum visits and other cultural activities”, she said. Ms Tebje said that the UK tourists are looking for more adventure from their holidays these days, and therefore they are now travelling to Borneo and Bolivia.

Ms Tebje said that Cape Town was competing with destinations such as Orlando and Spain too, and that the Cape Town accommodation prices were not inexpensive. Added to this was the feedback that Ms Tebje had received from tour operators selling the Cape in the UK, feeding back to her the negative effect of the strong Rand, the high cost of flights to our country, shorter booking lead times, poor perception of value for money, and price sensitivity.

The Cape tourism industry will have to look for tourists from Germany and particularly South Africa, to survive the poor coming summer season. It won’t include too many visitors from the UK!

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

The Sweet Award goes to Paarl Motors for effortlessly dealing with a customer’s car for a service, in collecting it from and dropping it off in Franschhoek, returning it beautifully cleaned, and charging an affordable price for the service, even though the vehicle is three years old. The customer sent her Garage Card along for payment, and it was returned safely, and payment taken efficiently.

The Sour Award goes to Boulder’s Beach and its management, the National Parks Board. Penny Klann, a registered tour guide, writes as follows:”National Parks is paranoid about letting people in without paying at the penguins at Boulders Beach (and at other tourist attractions such as the Cape Point nature reserve) and have instructed staff at these paypoints to check the tour guide’s i.d. card to make sure that they are a bona fide tour guide. Tour guides go in for free, as we ideally like to accompany our pax to see the penguins in order to give information to our pax about these fascinating birds. I have been going there on a regular basis as a tour guide for 15 years, and in the past year it has become irritating to say the least to be treated by these pay-point officials as if I am trying to get in illegally. For a while I had a tour guide card i.d. which had expired, but I had already paid up my new membership and was waiting for the new card to arrive. I explained this to the woman at the gate (who was intent on wielding her authority and blocking my access, as well as the 40 German tourists I had who were champing at the bit to get in to see the penguins, not to mention other tourists also waiting in the queue). As she would not accept that I was a paid-up official tour guide (in spite of my badge and the fact that my 40 tourists all obviously were with me), I showed her my Wild Card. This should have allowed me in without paying, even without a tour guide card, but – no – the woman insisted that I should show her my ID document to prove that I was the correct card holder. Unfortunately my Driver’s Licence was in the coach, parked some 400 metres away… and I tried to explain this to her, but she was determined to undermine and humiliate me in every way she could. She forbade me from going in with my pax, which meant I had to wait outside the gates and let my 40 German tourists go in without me. They were absolutely gobsmacked, and I felt like I was a criminal. These pax had had me guide them around the whole of South Africa for 2 weeks, and now their guide was being barred from entering a site of prime importance on their tour itinerary! Yesterday I was at the penguins with 2 high-profile VIP guests, and the woman at the gate studied my Tourist Guide ID card for a long time, and then said “You are not registered for the Western Cape”. I realised that she was looking at the back of my card, which lists the provinces for which I am registered. In my case, because I am a National Tour Guide, it states “All provinces”, which was obviously too complicated for this woman to understand. She got very uptight when I explained to her that the reason she didn’t see the province Western Cape mentioned is because I am registered for all provinces. Do these officious-minded people who work at this pay point have nothing better to do than be sour, unwelcoming and downright pathetic? They should be glad to have a job at one of the world’s most popular, charming tourist sites. They should be making the tour-guides who bring them paying customers feel welcome, not be intent on humiliating us in front of our pax. Why would we tour-guides want to get in for free in any case if not for the service of providing our pax with commentary? We tour guides have all seen the penguins countless times!”

The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog. Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at info@whalecottage.com. Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog, and in the WhaleTales newsletters on the www.whalecottage.com website.