Tag Archives: WhaleTales newsletter

Tourism Business Confidence continues downward slide!

The Tourism Business Council of South Africa FNB Tourism Business Index continues its downward trend, the reading for the second quarter showing a decline to 74,5, from 79 in the first quarter of 2011, and 89 in the last quarter of 2010, the first time that the Index was introduced, reports Business Report.  An Index of 100 is one of normality.

What is scary is that the tourism industry representatives interviewed in the first quarter of this year anticipated an increase in the Tourism Business Index for the second quarter of 94 – instead the Tourism Business Index fell by 20 points!   May and June were two extremely depressed tourism months, and a slight pick-up in accommodation bookings is being experienced at the moment, in part linked to the almost spring-like weather that the Cape experienced in the last two weeks.

The Tourism Business Council said that “Business in the travel and tourism sector continued to operate under heavy strain in the second quarter of 2011.  “When compared to the expected industry performance index of 94,1 for the second quarter, the industry performed significantly worse than expected …”.  The Council blames low international arrival numbers, low domestic leisure and business demand, the strong Rand, rising costs, changing travel patterns, high fuel prices, and the large number of public holidays “that failed to deliver the expected travel spend on domestic travel” as the major reasons for the poor confidence in the Tourism Industry. We wrote an Open Letter to national Minister of Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk last month, to share with him how poorly the tourism industry is doing, when he was communicating information that reflected the opposite! 

The Tourism Business Index is a national measure of current and future performance of the tourism and travel industry, and sub-sectors within the sector.   Looking ahead, the Index ‘forecast’ for the third quarter of this year is 81.  However, accommodation establishments forecast the Index at only 74, meaning that they see no improvement in business between the second and third quarters.  The Southern African Tourism Update writes that it is hotel groups who hold the particularly negative view of business performance in the next quarter.

It is sad to see how out of touch the Tourism Business Council is in not recognising the negative impact of international and domestic airfares on tourism to the Cape.  After sending out our WhaleTales newsletter last week, we received numerous responses from our past guests about the high airfares to Cape Town, and these were cited as the reason why past guests will not return to our city.  We passed this information on to provincial Tourism Minister Alan Winde, Cape Town Tourism CEO Mariette Du Toit-Helmbold, and FEDHASA Cape Vice-Chairman Rey Franco, but have not received any acknowledgement of receipt or comment in terms of intended communication with airlines from any of these tourism body representatives!

At a joint meeting of Cape Town Tourism, FEDHASA Cape, SACCI and SATSA yesterday afternoon, to address the poor tourism industry performance in the Cape, it was astonishing to hear that the Cape Chamber of Commerce, which has indices for manufacturing, construction, agriculture, and mining in the Western Cape, has no measure of the performance of tourism in the Western Cape.  When asked about the provincial performance of Tourism, the national Tourism Business Index was referred to.  Given that Tourism is the largest business sector of the Western Cape, one would hope that the Cape Chamber of Commerce will address this information shortcoming urgently.   Cape Town Tourism’s presentation at the meeting was disappointing, as it was about ‘Brand Cape Town’ yet again, despite many industry stakeholders having seen it already.  Even more surprising is that Cape Town Tourism is sticking to its new positioning of ‘Inspirational’ for Cape Town, when this positioning is already owned by Edinburgh and Korea, even more surprising when Mrs Helmbold emphasised that differentiation is key in marketing, especially in tough times! 

POSTSCRIPT 21/7: A very frank letter is addressed to the tourism industry today, by Tony Romer-Lee, the GM of The Collection by Liz McGrath, on the Hotel & Restaurant online site.   He spells out how shockingly bad business is in the tourism industry.

POSTSCRIPT 21/7: The headline of the Cape Argus this afternoon shouts: “Cape Tourism: ‘We are bleeding’, quoting from our Open Letter to the national Minister of Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk.  The article also quotes Tony Romer-Lee’s article mentioned in the Postscript above, in asking why “…occupancies across the board are the worst they have ever been?  That thousands of waiters, room attendants, middle managers and hospitality graduates are unable to find work and losing their jobs?”  Why is that owners are closing their businesses and banks are calling in their debts.  Why is that speculators like Protea hotels are announcing that they are looking to buy hotels in distress?  Without doubt every single hotelier or restaurateur will tell you that they have never seen it so bad.  They will also tell you that the outlook for the next couple of years also looks bleak”.  Provincial Tourism Minister Alan Winde is quoted as saying: “Definitely there is a sombre mood out there – there’s no doubt we are really feeling the pinch in all tourism-related industries.  But then again, we’re feeling the pinch in all industries”. Winde suggests three ‘urgent remedies’: more aggressive marketing of the good value Cape to Gauteng – the Cape used to be second largest domestic market, but has dropped to 4th place; more aggressive marketing to core markets to counter Greece attracting business from the UK, USA, and Europe away from South Africa; more work on seeking the benefit of now being part of the BRICS alliance.   Naively FEDHASA Cape Chairman Dirk Elzinga clings to his belief that the problem experienced in the tourism industry is merely one of seasonality.  He says: “But, yes, occupancies in hotels are very low. Most hoteliers are saying they have not experienced such low occupancies for a very long time.  It is not happy times out there”.  Elzinga referred to the joint tourism association meeting which was held yesterday afternoon, and said that the industry expressed its criticism of the lack of co-ordination between Cape Town Tourism, Cape Town Routes Unlimited, and SA Tourism in marketing Cape Town ‘to the world’!

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

Whale Cottage Blog a ‘controversial’ Finalist for 2010 SA Blog Awards

Yesterday was a day of reckoning for the bloggers of South Africa, who had been judged by a committee of three, and voted for by their fans, in making the short-list of ten finalists in 25 categories of the S A Blog Awards.  We are delighted to have been selected as a Finalist in the Most Controversial Blog category, and thank our loyal blog readers, friends, commenters, and Twitter followers for their votes in making the Finalist selection possible.

Now we are like Idols contestants, in that we please request your vote for our Blog, to win in the category (there is no prize, other than a badge that goes onto the blog). The Most Controversial Blog category is quite far down the list, and you need to please click on our blog name to vote, and then to scroll down to the bottom of the list, to enter your e-mail address.  You are allowed to vote for us every 24 hours, per e-mail address, until the competition closes on 17 September.

The Whale Cottage Blog had been nominated in a number of categories, including Best Food & Wine Blog, Best Blog Post, Most Controversial Blog and Best Travel Blog.  Being a unique blog that does not fit fully into any specific category (e.g. Food, Travel), we were delighted to have made the finals (somehow we never got to enter last year).  The Most Controversial Blog category is a new one introduced this year, and it seemed to suit us ideally!   If we have created a unique identity for our blog, it has been to be “independent * incisive * informative”, and it is described as being controversial, due to our lack of fear to write the truth, no matter the consequences.

We are in excellent company in this category, with 2Oceansvibe being a fellow finalist – last year its editor ‘Seth Rotherham’ won almost every category in the Blog Awards, and his blog became the benchmark for many of us (this year a blog can only be nominated in two categories).   The rest of the Finalists’ list is a little more dubious, sex and swearing broadly summarising the content of the other blogs in the Most Controversial Blog category.

The WhaleTales newsletter has been distributed for the past nine years, and has been the foundation of our writing about controversial issues.   It has not always been easy to be outspoken, in that we have experienced the following:

*  being told to not come back to the Opal Lounge, due to an unfavourable review that we wrote (in fact the instruction to not return was issued telephonically by the co-owner before the review was written and published)

*  being escorted out of Beluga by the police during a invited lunch for members of an association of guest house owners in Camps Bay, of which I am the chairman, because sister restaurant Sevruga received a Sour Service Award on this blog for a Cape Times book launch lunch, which the restaurant handled poorly, both food and service-wise

*   being threatened with legal action when we tackled Carne about falsely claiming that all its beef, lamb and game served comes from its Karoo farm and is organic, our most controversial blog post in the two year history of blog-writing.  This blog post was nominated for Best Blog Post.  The Carne blog post, and its follow up, took investigative journalism of the bravest kind, in obtaining documentation from the suppliers of the meat, and in obtaining (by luck) a telephonic admission by a supplier of meat to Carne, resulting in Carne withdrawing its legal threat, declaring the matter closed, and taking the dishonest claim off their website.

*   being on the receiving end of FEDHASA Cape’s attempt to cancel our membership, which resulted in my resignation as a Director of the hotel old-boys’ club, when I wrote about the dangers of small accommodation establishments signing with FIFA’s MATCH for the World Cup, over the past five years.  My views about MATCH were not in line with the hotel interests which dominated the FEDHASA Cape Board, and Nils Heckscher, GM of the Winchester Mansions, tried his best to get me off the Board.  Ultimately, we were vindicated in our advice when MATCH cancelled the bulk of its booked small and hotel accommodation throughout South Africa, the Winchester Mansions being one of the hotels badly hit by the cancellation of booked rooms by MATCH.  

*   being threatened with legal action by the Cape Whale Coast DMO, after our blog post of 28 December 2009 raised questions about the conflict of interest created by Clinton Lerm being the Chairman of the Hermanus Tourism Bureau and of the DMO.   Nothing has come of this threat to date.  Yesterday we published a follow-up story on the DMO’s lack of transparency.

*  writing critical restaurant reviews, without “white-washing” them

*   awarding Sweet and Sour Service Awards on the blog every Friday.

We would also like to recommend the following blogging friends and colleagues, for your vote:

*  Food & Wine Blog category: Cooksister (Jeanne Horak-Druiff), My-Easy-Cooking (Nina Timm), JamieWho? (Andy Fenner) and The Foodie (David Cope) (all of last year’s finalists have dropped out of this category, other than Cooksister and My-Easy-Cooking)

*   Best Travel Blog category:   SA Venues and Cape Town Travel (Cape Town Tourism)

*   Best Twitter Microblogger category: Relax-with-Dax, Gus Silber, and Spit or Swallow

We thank you for your support and your votes.

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

Leechie Marketing Sweet and Westin Grand Hotel Sour Service Awards

The Sweet Service Award goes to Michelle Ladewig, from Leechie Marketing, the Whale Cottage designer.   Michelle was asked if she could finalise the WhaleTales newsletter on Sunday evening, for it to go out early on Monday, but to incorporate the winners of the Eat Out Top 10 Restaurant Awards, which were only announced at about 22h00 that evening.   The Top 10 list was sent to Michelle by sms from the function, while the paragraphs summarising the evening were e-mailed after the event.  By midnight the newsletter was completed and proofread, ready to be sent out the next morning!

The Sour Service Award goes to the Westin Grand Hotel, at which the Eat Out Top 10 Restaurant Awards took place.   Problems encountered by guests paying R 650 per ticket were warm sparkling wine served on arrival, warm white wine and water served at the table, no ice buckets brought to the tables to keep the wine and water cold, staff not respecting one’s space, squashing past one, red wine requested instead of white wine did not arrive, and worst of all, the airconditioning did not work properly, making it unbearably warm in the ballroom.  As New Media Publishing was not addressing the problems, the F&B Manager was called, and the problems explained.   He made an improvement as far as wine temperature and supply of red wine was concerned, but could not fix the aircon problem.   It seemed that the staff were untrained for the event, and that there was no senior management staff on duty (it being a Sunday, a favourite day for senior hotel staff to take the day off!).   Luckily the food preparation was done by the top chefs attending the function, and their food could not be faulted at all.  Eben, the F&B Director of the hotel, called early on Monday, after reading the WhaleTales blog post about the Eat Out evening, and apologised for the problems.  He explained that it was a difficult function to service, and admitted that the airconditioning was not operating effectively, and that they could not get it fixed the previous evening.   The Westin Grand Hotel had the top chefs and food lovers from around the country attending the function, who were being lauded for their food quality and service excellence, yet they themselves could not deliver, which was a poor reflection not only on the hotel but also on New Media, Eat Out and its sponsors Prudential and Veritas wines.

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.