Tag Archives: Tourism Events and Marketing

Bafana Bafana v Norway International at Cape Town Stadium a failed tourism AFCON 2013 consolation prize for Cape Town!

Last night visiting soccer team Norway beat our national team Bafana Bafana 1-0, played in an International at Cape Town Stadium.  Billed as a consolation prize for the fact that Cape Town did not make the AFCON 2013 host city bid, the event last night made no contribution to attracting tourists to Cape Town at all!  The match was seen as a warm-up match for Bafana Bafana’s participation in AFCON 2013, which starts in ten days.

One wonders how the City of Cape Town can allocate millions of Rands of ratepayers’ monies to its newly created Tourism, Events, and Marketing Directorate, led by its Executive Director Anton Groenewald and reporting to Mayoral Committee member Grant Pascoe, when they are so poor at handling any marketing of Cape Town and the organisation of events in the Mother City!  The department is under pressure to earn revenue from its biggest (loss-making) asset, being the Cape Town Stadium.  It was odd then that yesterday one could read on Facebook and Twitter about the frustrations last minute ticket purchasers experienced at Computicket, only single seats being available yesterday morning, even though the full allocation of 40000 seats for the match had not yet been sold.  A new release of tickets was promised by the City, but did not appear to have been made.  On Monday morning the City was using the local radio stations to market the event, it being claimed that only 8000 tickets had been sold.  One also read on Twitter that tickets could only be bought at Computicket, and were not available at the stadium itself, which appears to be a marketing weakness too!  Last week the City placed print ads such as the one in this blogpost in the local newspapers, to encourage ticket sales, clearly a home-made design job!

The City’s media statement quoted Groenewald as saying that ‘the match is a sign of its commitment and and continuous support for Bafana Bafana‘, despite the soccer team only having played in Cape Town for the second time in three years!

Even though the City has seen it in the past, when Manchester United played Ajax Cape Town last winter, soccer matches do not attract out of town visitors to Cape Town. The same was the case yesterday, for two reasons. The soccer matches are supported by local Capetonians, and the support clearly is not attractive enough yet for Western Cape residents to drive from other cities and towns to see the match, especially as the starting time of 20h30 was so late.  Even more so this starting time would have necessitated accommodation for out-of-town soccer fans, but we did not see any enquiries or bookings for the soccer match.  In addition, Cape Town is still bursting at its tourism seams, and so if there had been a tourism requirement, there would not have been any space for them to be accommodated in a suburb such as Camps Bay!   One wonders why the City chose a date for the match at a time when Cape Town did not need any additional visitors!

Had the Cape Town Stadium been full tonight, with all 40000 seats sold at an average price of R75 (ticket prices were R100 and R50), the total revenue would only have been R3 million, which would not have covered the costs.  We know that the City buses in soccer fans for free in the last minute to save face, that Computicket would have charged the City of Cape Town a fee per ticket sold, that not all tickets will have been sold, and that more cheaper tickets will have been sold, meaning that the real income may have been closer to R1,5 million income, hardly worth the effort in terms of costs relative to income.  The match also damaged the image of the City of Cape Town, in reflecting its inability to organise and market events!

It was the City of Cape Town and its Councillor Grant Pascoe that have cost Cape Town, and with it its tourism industry as well as soccer lovers, a vast income which Cape Town would have earned had it been selected as a Host City for AFCON 2013, which kicks off on 19 January, and runs over three weeks. South Africa was awarded the African soccer games when FIFA cancelled Libya as the host country due to political turmoil.  The City of Cape Town owes the tourism and hospitality industry lost income!

POSTSCRIPT 9/1: The following comment about the ticket sales by the City of Cape Town was posted to this blogpost today: “I’m afraid it gets worse. The inside track has it that due to slow ticket sales days before, they utilised their own infrastructure to sell tickets, with the MyCiti kiosks etc. And of course, when they were deluged with last-minute sales, they had to re-load all those tickets on computicket, at a 1000 tickets per time. Which was a huge disadvantage to all those queue-ing as those tickets were snapped up online within minutes of their being loaded onto the system. Hence the estimate of 10 000 turned away at Computicket due to tickets being “sold out” Groenewald sheepishly claimed they didn’t take into consideration that Capetonians buy tickets at the last minute! Oy va voi!”

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

New Cape Town Tourism Chairman Sabine Lehmann to focus on new City of Cape Town marketing relationship!

As we predicted, the new Chairman of Cape Town Tourism is its previous Deputy Chairman and the Managing Director of the Table Mountain Aerial Cableway Company, Sabine Lehmann, the first female Chairman of the tourism body, and elected at the first meeting of the new Cape Town Tourism Board two weeks ago, said an e-mail sent to Cape Town Tourism members last week.

Ms Lehmann will not have an easy task to negotiate with tough City of Cape Town funder Anton Groenewald, the Director of the new City of Cape Town Tourism, Events and Marketing (TEAM) Directorate, who showed his muscle eight years ago, when he brought the previous Cape Town Tourism and its Board (with CEO Sheryl Ozinsky) on its knees, by withholding funding when we as a Board attempted resisting amalgamation with all the other tourism bodies in Cape Town, and closing down the original Section 21 company (which still has not been wound down!).

At the AGM of Cape Town Tourism last month, Mr Groenewald announced that his Directorate will take away Destination Marketing from Cape Town Tourism, which will be left with Visitor Services and Tourism Marketing only, seen by most in the industry as well as journalists as a vote of no confidence in the marketing, or lack of, of Cape Town. Its future marketing role will be restricted to representing Cape Town at international exhibitions (such as World Travel Market in London, where CEO Mariette du Toit-Helmbold is representing Cape Town with Wesgro at the moment), hosting local and international media, and digital marketing. The City of Cape Town has appointed Rory Viljoen as its new Director of Place Marketing (or Destination Marketing).

In the Cape Town Tourism member e-mail Mrs Helmbold tried to sound upbeat towards her members, and made the right noises towards the City of Cape Town and its future relationship: “…the Cape Town Tourism Executive team and Board are optimistic about working with the City on a new destination marketing model for Cape Town”. She referred to the Constitution of Cape Town Tourism, writing that the tourism body ‘will continue to deliver tourism marketing and visitor services in line with our Constitution’. However, the City’s removal of Cape Town Tourism’s Destination Marketing role is in breach of Cape Town Tourism’s Constitution, an issue which she does not address.  A new three year contract is to be negotiated with the City of Cape Town as a first priority, to provide greater financial and operational stability for Cape Town Tourism, as the contracts have been renewed annually in the past. Ms Lehmann will have to live with the Service Level Agreement which appears to have been hastily signed by outgoing Cape Town Tourism Chairman Ian Bartes before the AGM, and possibly without approval from the rest of the Board members.

The rest of the two page e-mail is a badly written copy and paste job of a recent media release, as well as of Mrs Helmbold’s speech at the AGM, with unacceptable grammatical errors and Mrs Helmbold’s love for nonsensical phrases: “We’ve had to make difficult decisions in the past, and we will do so again to ensure that Cape Town Tourism is a well-run organisation that contributes in a real way to positioning Cape Town as one of the world’s leading tourism destinations. As always, we will take the industry along on our journey and ensure that our strategies and plans are co-crafted with the industry and the stakeholders who are the flesh and blood of the tourism sector in Cape Town. Changes in our environment, whether local or international, brings (sic) with it the opportunity to go back to basics, re-imagine the future and ensure that we stay relevant”.

The e-mail to the Cape Town Tourism members does not explain to its members what exactly its future role will be, and what impact this will have on the staffing of Cape Town Tourism (some retrenchments were hinted at at the AGM) and on the service delivery to its members. Surprising is that Mrs Helmbold does not know the correct company name of her new Chairman!

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

New City of Cape Town Place Marketing Director Rory Viljoen to put Cape Town on the map!

While many in the Cape Town tourism industry are shaking their heads about yet another change at Cape Town Tourism, the City of Cape Town taking away the role of Destination Marketing from Cape Town Tourism four years after having given it to the tourism body, one can be grateful for two things: that a change can only be better than the little and ineffectual marketing being done by Cape Town Tourism, and that one could not wish for a better Marketing Director for brand ‘Cape Town’ than Rory Viljoen, Place Marketing Director in the new Tourism, Events and Marketing (TEAM) Directorate of the City of Cape Town.

It was a bumpy start to meeting Rory, who has only been working for the City for ten weeks, and is still suffering temporary staff in setting up his appointments.  It was third time lucky, despite a time error, to finally meet him and Daylin Mitchell, the Executive Support Officer for Councillor Grant Pascoe, the Mayoral Committee member for Tourism, Events, and Marketing, in Rory’s office in the TELKOM Tower adjacent to the Civic Centre.

Rory gave little away in the interview, instead turning the tables by asking what should be done in marketing Cape Town.  We discussed the impact of Seasonality on our businesses, and how we have been made promises in this regard by both Cape Town Tourism and the ex-Cape Town Routes Unlimited (now amalgamated into Wesgro); sharing information with the industry; generating coverage in traditional media locally and internationally with Social Media support (and not the other way around, as practised by Cape Town Tourism); Events in the winter months; addressing the lack of airline seats from Johannesburg to Cape Town on Fridays; the extreme airfares to get to Cape Town from international destinations; the confusion that has resulted amongst the tourism industry about the City’s new destination marketing directorate which some mistakenly seeing it to be Wesgro’s new marketing department; the reduced bookings via Cape Town Tourism’s tourism bureaus as tourists are booking most requirements on-line, before they leave or on their iPads; the ‘Mommy’ Tweeting by Cape Town Tourism CEO Mariette du Toit-Helmbold; the role of the V&A Waterfront in the tourism portfolio of Cape Town; the controversial trip by ten Cape Town Tourism and City of Cape Town executives to Turkey (clearly a sensitive issue, judging by Rory’s body language when the topic arose – he was not part of the delegation); the renewal of Mrs Helmbold’s contract as CEO next year; and much more.

While Rory has chosen to call his portfolio ‘Place Marketing’, he said it is just another name for Destination Marketing.   His private sector experience in marketing Distell’s brands in Africa and Europe, as well as having been South African Marketing Director of Coca Cola during the 2006 and 2010 World Cup soccer championships, shadowing the Beijing and Vancouver World Cups, and his involvement in the European Championships played in Germany and Switzerland, gives him an excellent insight in hosting events, and in creating marketing linkages.  He said that he does not know the Marketing Budget yet (we have seen that the Tourism, Events and Marketing Directorate, headed by Anton Groenewald, has a budget of R500 million per annum!), as he needs to finalise his Strategic Plan, translate that into the Marketing Budget, and then appoint the staff to execute his Marketing Strategy.  He said that he likes to work in an organised manner, step by step, ‘every chapter must stand like a book’, he said.  His biggest challenge is to find a measurement of success for his department, currently believing that arrivals at Cape Town International would be the most reliable measurement of marketing success at this stage, despite Cape Town International Service Standards Manager and outgoing Cape Town Tourism Chairman Ian Bartes warning that there would be no growth in tourism arrivals via our local airport in the next two years.

While Daylin is active on Twitter, Rory and Mr Groenewald are not.  Currently Digital and Social Media Marketing of Cape Town rests with Cape Town Tourism in their new mandate of only focusing on Tourism Marketing (with Visitor Services), but Rory indicated that they are looking to appoint a strong Media person, who will be responsible for Media Relations, Digital Marketing, Social Media Marketing, and the writing of Speeches.  One can assume that the Digital Marketing of Cape Town will move from Cape Town Tourism to the City of Cape Town once the position has been filled.

It will be interesting to see how brand ‘Cape Town’ will be packaged, with a new logo, a pay-off line, and an extensive communication campaign to support new events, the focus being to make the Cape Town Stadium commercially viable by hosting more events there, and ultimately to attract more visitors to Cape Town.

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