Tag Archives: Turkey

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 20 September

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*  Premium South African wines are increasingly being  exported to other African countries, Nigeria in particular, as well as to Ghana, Angola, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

*   American travelers are likely to rate service satisfaction highest, and the Japanese tourists the lowest, with French, German, Italian, Spanish and British tourists falling in between these satisfaction rating spectrums.  This finding comes from a multicountry service satisfaction study conducted amongst a sample of 200000 travelers.

*   We have it all wrong – the most popular travel time for the UK and German market is August, tourists taking about 10 days off, and traveling to the Balearic islands, Turkey, or Greece in Europe, and Mexico on long haul trips, a TUI study of its bookings for 2013 has found.

*   ACSA is planning to introduce a service whereby one can buy duty-free goods on Continue reading →

New Cape Town Tourism CEO Enver Duminy accommodates his members, listening and learning!

enver-duminy-cape-town-tourismOn his 46th day in the hot seat as CEO of Cape Town Tourism, Enver Duminy was generous with his time yesterday, and we covered a lot of ground, each interviewing the other! I was impressed with his ability to listen, really wanting to know my views on tourism and Cape Town Tourism, even though many of them have been documented on this blog.

Enver and his predecessor Mariette du Toit-Helmbold could not be more different. Enver is very much quieter, more reserved, gentle,  interested in others and their views, is not opinionated in presuming to know all the answers, is friendly, is diplomatic, is not focused on himself but on his job to attract more tourists to Cape Town, and surprised me when he gave me a hug on leaving instead of shaking my hand!  He didn’t want the interview to be about him alone, and he took the opportunity to ask about me as well, and I realised that he knew little about me (he did know that I enjoyed MasterChef SA, and has read this blog, being intrigued about how I see things so differently!).

Enver grew up in Mitchell’s Plain, studied Computer Sciences and Mathematical Statistics, and his first job took him to IBM in Johannesburg.  He returned to Cape Town, working at ESKOM, running a computer training company with friends, working at Nedbank in their ATM, software and home loans departments, and at Integer, a home loans company.  All along his career he has done management courses, believing in ‘educating yourself’, but with a focus on ‘how to apply the knowledge‘, as ‘anything is possible‘, he says.  He is currently doing a Continue reading →

Cape Town Tourism CEO departure could benefit City tourism!

Mariette du Toit-Helmbold, CEO of Cape Town Tourism, will be leaving the organisation in July, she announced on Thursday, after nine years at its helm. While she wrote in the media statement that she had not renewed her contract with Cape Town Tourism, we believe that it is her organisation’s funder, the City of Cape Town, that may have decided to not renew her contract, Councillor Grant Pascoe finding her to be ‘inedible’, as per its original media release!

Mrs Helmbold took over the reins at Cape Town Tourism when the previous Section 21 Cape Town Tourism company was closed down by the City of Cape Town by bleeding it dry financially.  At that time Sheryl Ozinsky was the CEO of the organisation, and I served on the Board as its Deputy Chairman. I remember the sad day for Mrs Helmbold at that time, when the V&A Waterfront’s Tourist Information Centre, headed up by her, was closed down, and we tried to help mop up her tears.  Much has changed since then, Mrs Helmbold having grown in confidence when she was lucky to have been appointed as CEO of Cape Town Tourism, to step into Ms Ozinsky’s shoes.  Mrs Helmbold is a friendly person, and a good networker, but she never had the energy of Ms Ozinsky, who was able to generate reams of free publicity for Cape Town with a close to zero marketing budget at the time.  In the nine year period Mrs Helmbold became very powerful, and received support and protection from the DA powerfrau team of Premier Helen Zille and Mayor Patricia de Lille. She must have felt very safe with the support, allowing herself to slip in her performance levels over time, especially in the past two years:

*   She took long maternity leave for the birth of her daughters, over two busy summer seasons, and little marketing happened in her absences.  Her priorities had clearly changed, and she increasingly ‘mommy Tweeted’ photographs of her children, on a Twitter account that is widely read by the tourism industry as she uses it when she comments about Tourism.  Her personal Twitter account has a link to the Cape Town Tourism website.  These days she hashtags her #MommyTweets, almost in proud defiance!

*   She has had inappropriate relationships with some of her staff, treating Skye Grove and Vel Corcoran as friends rather than as colleagues.  Ms Grove took photographs of Mrs Helmbold’s children at birthday parties, and was thanked via Twitter.

*   She appears to not have been able to reprimand her staff, particularly Ms Grove, who does not hide her personal agendas relative to others in the tourism industry, in retweeting disparaging Tweets, blocking tourism players, not retweeting all positive Tweets relating to Cape Town but only those of a select few, completely unacceptable in her role as the PR and Communications Manager of Cape Town Tourism.   She allowed Ms Grove to work for outside events, such as ‘100 Women 100 Wines’ two years running, in handling the media coverage for the organisers,  and even paying a R20000 sponsorship towards the event in the first year.

*   She appointed Ms Grove to handle Public Relations, without testing her capabilities. The media releases, written by Ms Grove, have been poor, with grammatical errors, inane comments attributed to Mrs Helmbold, and poor proof reading!  The media release announcing Mrs Helmbold’s departure contained a major error, which led to a correction having to be issued, Councillor Grant Pascoe not having found Mrs Helmbold to be ‘inedible’, as per the original media statement sent out.  The media statement should have been checked by Ms Grove, Mrs Helmbold, Councillor Grant Pascoe, and Cape Town Tourism’s PR company Rabbit in a Hat Communications, yet it still was issued with the error!

*   She threatened legal action against ourselves for the criticism we and tourism commenters posted on our blog about her organisation’s poor marketing performance, using Cape Town Tourism’s limited financial resources to brief the organisation’s lawyers to issue a legal threat, which came to nothing. She tried to have our membership of Cape Town Tourism cancelled, at a time when it had expired and we had decided to not renew it, due to the poor marketing performance by Mrs Helmbold’s marketing team, despite the appointment of Mrs Corcoran as its Marketing executive.  Similarly, Mrs Helmbold allowed Ms Grove to brief the same legal firm to threaten us with legal action recently about our blog and comments posted by others.

The real thorn in Mrs Helmbold’s side has been the establishment of the City of Cape Town’s own Tourism, Events and Marketing department, in opposition to Cape Town Tourism, one could say.  This meant that Destination Marketing was removed from Cape Town Tourism’s mandate, and with it a few million Rand from the budget too, seen by many in the industry as a vote of no-confidence by the City in Mrs Helmbold’s leadership. The City is using the reduced Cape Town Tourism monies to fund its own marketing of the City (none of its work is visible yet)!  At the time that Mrs Helmbold went on the Turkey trip last September we had already heard that the City was considering not renewing Mrs Helmbold’s contract.

While one can speculate that Mrs Helmbold’s departure will be good for tourism as there can only be more marketing done than by Mrs Helmbold, and less Tweeting and politicking, as Mrs Helmbold had increasingly taken to. What is a concern though is that Mrs Helmbold leaves in five months, and the City will be advertising her position.  We know from Wesgro, the provincial tourism marketing body, that it is extremely difficult to find a suitable tourism leader, Wesgro still not having found a Tourism CEO in the past ten months since the previous Cape Town Routes Unlimited was amalgamated into Wesgro!  This is bad news for Cape Town and the Western Cape, if both bodies are leaderless – even with leaders no marketing has been visible for our region, so this will just get worse, one can predict!

The Cape Town Tourism media release highlighted Mrs Helmbold’s achievements, including the amalgamation of the various tourist information bureaus across the City and Somerset West, and many marketing campaigns she is praised for, which we have seen generating little benefit for our tourism industry!  Sabine Lehmann, Chairman of the Cape Town Tourism board, described Mrs Helmbold as ‘fearless’ (the context is not explained and we can not think of examples), and passionate about Cape Town (yet she did an intensive PR job for Istanbul when she was part of the Turkey delegation, and Tweets about Pringle Bay all the time).  Councillor Pascoe thanked Mrs Helmbold for her ‘leadership, commitment, and dedication to (sic) promoting Cape Town, both locally and internationally.  She has left an indelible mark on Cape Town and the tourism industry’, as if Mrs Helmbold has left the organisation already!

Mrs Helmbold leaves Cape Town Tourism at the end of July, the media statement says, but her contract expires at the end of June.  She will still present the organisation’s Annual Report at its AGM in October, where she will ‘hand over the reins to the new CEO‘!  She is said to start her own tourism consultancy business.

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

City of Cape Town Schadenfreude, justifies sitting out AFCON 2013!

Councillor Grant Pascoe has been rubbing his hands with glee since The Times reported the extent of the financial losses the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) 2013 Host Cities are suffering, when he single-handedly was responsible for Cape Town losing out on being selected as a Host City.  Even Western Cape Premier Helen Zille Tweeted a link to the article, which only quotes DA politicians in the respective Host Cities, despite this being a City of Cape Town and not a provincial issue!

The Times article reflects that it is the smaller municipalities that are struggling in particular, including Nelson Mandela Bay municipality in Port Elizabeth, using R11,6 million of ratepayers’ monies to fund its hosting of the event. The city is still bearing the load of the cost of hosting the 2010 World Cup, having overspent on that event by more than R500 million. Mbombela municipality in Nelspruit is allegedly spending money it does not have on AFCON 2013, not yet having signed a memorandum of understanding with the government to obtain R31,5 million in funding for the event.

Cape Town withdrew from the bid to be a Host City initially, and ‘refused to be bullied’ into the event.  When the city changed its mind about its participation, the door was closed on what was deemed to be too many demands made by City of Cape Town Councillor Grant Pascoe, Mayoral Committee member for Tourism, Events, and Marketing!  This cost Cape Town the bid for Host City!

Reacting to an editorial by the Cape Times, Councillor Pascoe wrote a letter in response, which was posted on the City’s website, justifying Cape Town’s non-participation, sounding very different to his explanation of the Host City snub when it was announced last year.  He wrote this week that the City is supportive of Bafana Bafana (that is not being debated!) and the growth of African football, and that ‘we would have, in principle, been more than pleased to host AFCON matches.  In fact, we did everything in our power to make the hosting of matches a reality’. This contradicts the Local Organising Committee feedback about Cape Town’s failed bid at the time.

He continued: “However, as a responsible government, this administration needed to weigh the service delivery needs of all our residents with the benefits of hosting AFCON. Our mandate remains to make every cent of our ratepayers’ money count. And our commitment to caring and providing for our citizens, particularly the poor and vulnerable, remains paramount. We must always ensure that money spent by the City, is done so to drive economic growth, development and inclusion.  We had entered the negotiations with AFCON in good faith and were committed to the process. But it became clear we could not accept demands which could place an unfair burden on Cape Town’s ratepayers. At the time, costs to the ratepayer for the tournament were estimated to exceed R50 million.  Your editorial refers to the “enthusiastic support” Cape Town’s soccer fans displayed at last week’s friendly encounter. This event was hosted by the City as a show of support for Bafana Bafana before their participation in AFCON. It is just one indication that the City of Cape Town and its residents remain highly supportive of Bafana Bafana and AFCON.  While Cape Town will not host AFCON matches, we wanted Cape Town sports enthusiasts to experience live international soccer in the run up to the tournament. Ticket sales were in excess of 37 000.  The City remains committed to the hosting of high profile national, regional and international football matches. We are currently in negotiations with a range of partners to this effect”.

He also expressed a touch of Schadenfreude to a Cape Times journalist on Friday, saying that Cape Town had ‘dodged a bullet’ financially ‘by being snubbed from the tournament’, and ‘sympathised’ with the Host Cities’ financial woes and poor ticket sales.  ‘I think that we have dodged a bullet because the government guarantees came too late. There was no clarity on how much host cities would have to spend.  I’m really sorry that the host cities are battling with money for the tournament. It is something that we were concerned about because we had to think about our service delivery obligations’, Pascoe told the journalist.

Ticket sales have been sluggish across all matches, and only the opening match yesterday between Bafana Bafana and Cape Verde resulting in a goalless draw, was sold out.  The television coverage showed that not all ticket holders had arrived at the stadium, with lots of empty seating, possibly due to the torrential rain which Johannesburg experienced yesterday. Umbrellas were listed on the banned list of dangerous items!  It appears that one way that the municipalities can make their money back is via beverages.  Yesterday a Tweet of the beverage prices at the (AFCON 2013 renamed) National Stadium in Soweto showed a 500ml bottle of water costing an exorbitant R45!

The City of Cape Town is conveniently hiding behind the financial problems of the two smaller municipalities, which have not been reported for Durban and Johannesburg, being more comparable to Cape Town. The loss in tourism revenue at a time when Cape Town is almost devoid of tourists over the next two weeks, and the international television coverage for AFCON 2013, would have been valuable for brands Cape Town and the Western Cape and its tourism industry, and soccer fans too.  It is hard to believe Councillor’s Pascoe supposed concern for ratepayers’ monies when he knows that he was part of a 10 person sightseeing tour of Turkey last year, of which no Turkish tourism benefit has been seen locally, he allows Cape Town Tourism to squander ratepayers’ monies, and he organised the loss-making Bafana Bafana vs Norway friendly at the Cape Town Stadium two weeks ago!

POSTSCRIPT 20/1: The Times reported on Friday that an estimated 1 billion television viewers will have seen the Opening Ceremony yesterday, reflecting the AFCON 2013 theme of ‘Celebrate Africa – The Beat at Africa’s Feet’. The newspaper also reported the concern about the African invader fly being an unwelcome visitor to South Africa for AFCON 2013, food (fruit especially) brought along by soccer fans from Africa potentially being contaminated with the fly.  On Friday Spar took a full page advertisement in The Times to apologise ‘to all our loyal customers for any inconvenience created by the AFCON voucher/ticket redemption process’. However, it is not clear what problems the retailer is referring to.

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