Tag Archives: Tweets

Cape Town Mayoral Committee for Tourism, Events, and Marketing Grant Pascoe defects to ANC, loses portfolio with immediate effect!

Cape Town StadiumWhat excellent news it was to see on Twitter yesterday afternoon that now former Councillor Grant Pascoe has defected to the ANC for ‘personal reasons’, a decision Mayor Patricia de Lille (who appeared to be a close friend), said caught her by surprise.  She announced that he has been stripped of his position as Councillor and as Mayoral Committee member of Tourism, Events, and Marketing with immediate effect.   We have been very critical of Pascoe’s lack of marketing knowledge and leadership, once again leaving our City’s tourism industry without a marketing plan for the forthcoming winter, which kicked in earlier than usual last week!

The announcement was made by the ANC, and not by Pascoe himself.  The political party said: ‘Councillor Pascoe joins an overwhelming number of South Africans, who despite finding themselves in other political parties, recognise the ANC as the only organisation with the track record, capacity, and determination to build a South Africa’.  Pascoe explained that he was unhappy with the direction which the DA was taking, and had discussed this internally.  To avoid a fight, he decided to leave. He said he feels ‘at home‘ in the ANC, EWN reported! Yet on Pascoe’s Facebook page for his ‘political organisation‘, his ‘About Grant Pascoe’ still states: ‘The Democratic Alliance is South Africa and Cape Town’s best hope for a better future for all our people‘!

Pascoe served as a City of Cape Town DA Councillor for 13 years, and as a Mayoral Committee member for eight years, the last four of which were heading up the Tourism, Events, and Marketing portfolio.  Two years ago he initiated the creation of a Tourism, Events and Marketing directorate, which reported to him and is headed up by Anton Groenewald.  Pascoe’s sole contribution was to bring soccer events to Cape Town, which made no impact on the tourism industry in terms of bookings, reflecting his personal interest in soccer.   From the outset we have criticised Pascoe’s incompetence in the Tourism portfolio: Continue reading →

MyCiTi Bus strike poor PR for City of Cape Town!

My CiTi Bus imagesThe City of Cape Town’s MyCiTi Bus service has received mainly praise since it was introduced in 2010, just in time for the World Cup (although not meeting its deadline for the event for its original transport plans), and has praised itself recently for how many passengers its has transported, and how it is expanding the routes.  All of a sudden it is facing a PR nightmare, which it seems inexperienced to handle!

Two months ago the MyCiTi Bus service was criticised by Professor Deon Knobel, who wrote an open letter to Mayor Patricia de Lille and to Brett Herron, City Councillor for Transport, in the Cape Times.   Professor Knobel observed how wasteful the route in Oranjezicht/Tamboerskloof as well as Camps Bay is, asking some hard-hitting questions about the costs of running the service.   In the past week, the City has had to deal with two further problems, the most recent being the most debilitating in terms of the impact of its image.  It also informed Capetonians that the bulk of staff operating the MyCiTi Bus system are not employed by the City of Cape Town, but by third party contractors: Continue reading →

MyCiTi Bus Sweet and Sour Service Awards!

MyCiTi Bus Ikeraam Hendricks Sea Point Whale Cottage PortfolioThe Sweet Service Award goes to the Queens Beach station of MyCiTi Bus in Sea Point, for its patient offering of information about how the service operates, and in issuing the cards. Ikeraam Hendricks is the cashier at the station, and he arranged that I could enter the station, to check the timetable without the entry going off my card.   He also offered us the Atlantic Sun wrap-around about the service, when we asked for information.

My CiTi Bus imagesThe Sour Service Award goes to the MyCiTi Bus service, its bosses at the City of Cape Town, and the Mayoral Committee member for Transport, Roads, and Stormwater Brett Herron, who could not explain why the new MyCiTi Bus stop sign names on Ocean View Drive had such bizarre names such as CPUT, Convention Centre, and Roodebloem Road!  The Councillor is not good at replying to Tweets, Continue reading →

Cape Town Tourism ‘destinated’ to start afresh in marketing Cape Town!

mariettedth_1369339943_39Last week two senior members of staff left the services of Cape Town Tourism, being its CEO Mariette du Toit-Helmbold, and its PR and Communications Manager Skye Grove.  A new era lies ahead for the tourism body, which can hopefully get on with the focused marketing of Cape Town and its tourism industry again.

Given how badly Cape Town has been marketed as a tourism destination in the past few years, it is a fantastic opportunity for new CEO Enver Duminy to show what he can do to deal with the city’s terrible problem of Seasonality with barely any business in the winter months, which is unique to Cape Town, compared to South Africa’s other major cities.  Every year Mrs Helmbold has paid lip service to the problem, and promised to tackle the problem, but she never did, and business has become progressively worse every winter.

Shocking was the blatant exploitation in the past ten days by Mrs Helmbold to actively market the services of her new destination marketing consultancy whilst still in the employ of Cape Town Tourism.  She announced that she would establish a consultancy in April after her resignation from Cape Town Tourism became public in February.  As if Tweets on her own Twitter account were not enough to market the new consultancy whilst still working for Cape Town Tourism,  Cape Town Continue reading →