Tag Archives: Tripadvisor

Cape Town drops 10 places in Top 25 TripAdvisor 2016 Travelers’ Choice World Destination!

TripAdvisor cape-townCape Town has dropped to the 20th position in the TripAdvisor 2016 Travelers’ Choice Top 25 World Destinations list, from 10th last year, despite the extremely favourable exchange rate offered to tourists by our city. No explanation for the massive ranking drop is provided. and may be due to the stringent Visa Regulations!

The TripAdvisor 2016 Travelers’ Choice Awards World Destinations list has just been published: Continue reading →

Future of SA’s first Michelin star restaurant JAN may include Cape Town!

imageIt was a very special privilege to attend the launch of ‘JAN: A Breath of French Air‘, the second book by Chef Jan-Hendrik van der Westhuizen, owner of the recently crowned one star Michelin JAN restaurant in Nice, the restaurant which I had the pleasure of eating at in June last year! Fabulous news is that Chef Jan-Hendrik and/or JAN will have a future local presence, Chef Jan-Hendrik saying ‘it will be an honour to come back‘ to our country! Continue reading →

Conflict of interest: La Motte Culinary Director reviews Franschhoek restaurants for Eat Out

Eat-Out-mag-coverEarlier this year I was shocked to see that the La Motte Culinary Director (and wife of its red wine maker Edmund Terblanche) as well as Kokkedoor judge Hetta van Deventer had reviewed De Warenmarkt for Eat Out. Now it appears from the new Eat Out 2016 magazine that she reviewed a number of Franschhoek and other Boland restaurants (many on wine farms too) that are in direct competition with Pierneef à la Motte restaurant!

At the time that I saw the De Warenmarkt review by Van Deventer I Continue reading →

TripAdvisor tries to tackle fraud, too little too late!

imageIn an unprecedented move, TripAdvisor CEO Steve Kaufer wrote to millions of TripAdvisor properties today, to warn them against falling for fraudulent requests for payment to businesses offering them the placement of positive reviews, or the removal of negative TripAdvisor reviews. Even worse is that some of these bogus companies claim to have an official relationship with TripAdvisor!

Continue reading →