Tag Archives: World Cup 2010

Cape Town marketing: where is it?

With just over nine months to go before the 2010 World Cup, the marketing for Cape Town and the Western Cape appears to have become close to invisible.

About a year ago Cape Town Tourism was given the mandate by its members to accept the City of Cape Town’s directive to manage the marketing of Cape Town, a job previously done by Cape Town Routes Unlimited.    A Marketing Strategy was to have been prepared by Mariette du Toit-Helmbold, the bubbly Cape Town Tourism CEO, and she spent many hours obtaining input from members of the tourism industry to develop such a strategy, and a positioning for Cape Town.   She was a prolific writer and sent out numerous media releases.   The last release sent out by Cape Town Tourism, however,  was over a month ago, on 21 July.  

Cape Town Tourism has added a 2010 World Cup page to its website, and it is printing two issues of its Visitor’s Guide, instead of the usual one issue per year.  This appears to be the sum total of its current marketing activity.

At the time of her many brainstorming sessions, Du Toit-Helmbold favoured a positioning for Cape Town as the centre for innovation, design and creativity, but this has not been translated into a pay-off line, and it is not visible in the design of Cape Town Tourism’s website and letterhead.   The signature at the bottom of Du Toit-Helmbold’s e-mails has the pay-off line for Cape Town: “Living Cape Town.  Loving Cape Town”.    The website does not carry this pay-off line at all, but justifies the official Cape Town website www.capetown.travel as follows:” your trusted, impartial guide to Cape Town”.  The company started Twittering actively about three months ago, but now is invisible on Twitter. 

Cape Town Routes Unlimited is even quieter, and only sends out a weekly Events newsletter to the industry, and irregular CEO newsletters with far too many photographs, mainly of its CEO Calvyn Gilfillan.   An industry newsletter which helped inform tourism players has silently disappeared.

The CEO’s of Cape Town Tourism and of Cape Town Routes Unlimited last month met with the new Tourism heads in the City of Cape Town and Western Cape, Felicity Purchase and Alan Winde, respectively.  Could Du Toit-Helmbold have been silenced since attending this meeting?   The dates appear to coincide.

Interestingly, media reports earlier this year indicated that Cape Town Tourism had been awarded the marketing of Cape Town for another year, instead of referring to a three-year contract having been signed.   It intimated that the City had to seek tenders for the marketing, and could not just hand this over to Cape Town Tourism, as had been made public a year ago.   No information about a tender process, and the winner thereof, has been made public.

The meeting between Cape Town Tourism and Cape Town Routes Unlimited would have covered the prevention of duplication in the two marketing bodies’ marketing activities, and collaboration, where possible.  No further communication has been received in this regard from either body since the meeting last month.

Guy Lundy, CEO of Accelerate Cape Town, an organisation that connects with businesspersons to attract and stimulate economic growth for Cape Town, has criticised the marketing that is being done for Cape Town, reports the Cape Argus.   He too complains that too little marketing is being done, and that which is being done, is wrong, he says.   “Branding Cape Town as Africa’s party city for the World Cup should never have happened”, he said.   “The World Cup is that one opportunity we have to showcase the city to the world.  We don’t want to market ourselves like another Ibiza.”   Lundy says that Cape Town has changed its pay-off line from “Africa’s party capital” to “ready to welcome the world”, a line which was used in a few ads run in the local Cape Town newspapers, without much credibility, given that all the major Cape Town roads, its airport, the Cape Town station, and the rapid bus transport system are not yet ready for the 2010 World Cup!

Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com

Restaurants bounce back

FEDHASA Cape, the hospitality association, appears to focus on the restaurants closing down on Cape Town, as opposed to saluting the new restaurants opening in these most difficult times.   One of the new restaurants to open is The Quarter, the gourmet bunny-chow restaurant of Bruce Robertson, the previous owner of The Showroom, which closed in April.
 
FEDHASA has publicly listed restaurants that have not closed down when they went into liquidation, over-dramatising the severity of the effect of the recession on restaurants – Summerville in Camps Bay is one such example, which is alive and well and living!  
 
Despite the recession, the hospitality industry has a lot to be grateful for – bookings are still rolling in for the summer months ahead, for World Cup 2010, and for the two British and Irish Lions’ rugby matches to be played in Cape Town on 13 and 23 June, ensuring that Cape Town will be full around these dates.
 
The restaurant industry has had it good for many years, and the number of new restaurants opening up is testimony to the fact that they have received good support from Capetonians.   Those restaurants that are arrogant, that do not deliver good service, and that do not understand that value for money is key for customers, will feel the economic pinch.   Cape Town has a seasonality problem, and guest houses led the way many years ago in reducing their rates by up to 50 % in the winter months.   For the first time ever, restaurants are offering excellent winter specials.   An e-mail doing the rounds lists 30 restaurants with winter specials.   These include specials at Aubergine, Beluga, Bungalow, Cafe Caprice, Catharina’s, Five Flies, Myoga, Sinns, Pepenero, Tank, The Food Barn, The Kove, Tuscany Beach, Buitenverwachting, Constantia Uitsig, Cuvee, La Colombe, Terroir, Cape Colony and Salt.
 
Statements made by Rey Franco of FEDHASA are publicity opportunities for the four restaurants that he is the commercial manager of, rather than in providing a balanced view of the whole hospitality industry.  They also do not offer advice as to how businesses in the hospitality industry can stay alive in this recession.

Hospitality industry should be grateful

The Cape Times article “Restaurants, hotels ‘need innovation to survive slump'” (28 May) appears to exaggerate the effect of the credit crunch on the hospitality industry.
 
The hospitality players interviewed are not reflecting the seasonality problem, which affects the hospitality business badly in winter in Cape Town, compared to many other cities in South Africa.
 
Misleading reports heralding closures of restaurants in Cape Town, neglect to correct these when a restaurant like Summerville in Camps Bay never stopped trading – the liquidators handed over the running of the restaurant to new owners on 1 May, just a week after the news that the restaurant had “closed down”.    Bruce Robertson, of The Showroom, which closed down at the same time, has already opened a new but smaller “gourmet bunny-chow restaurant” called The Quarter.   Ian Halfon has also denied that his coffee shop Donatella’s in the V & A Waterfront closed due to the credit crunch.  He says that his lease expired. 
 
The hospitality industry has a lot to be grateful for, and does not need to ride on World Cup 2010 to say that all will be well.   The British and Irish Lions rugby matches in Cape Town on 13 and 23 June will lead to many hotels and guest houses being fully booked around those dates, and these rugby fans are staying for four days or more, which is unusual for winter bookings.  Sadly, the IPL did not benefit the mainstream guesthouse and hotel industry in our city at all.
 
The five successive interest rate cuts are fantastic news for all with bonds on their guest houses and B & B’s  –  the Whale Cottage bond costs for four guest houses are now down by R 50 000 per month compared to December 2008, when the first rate cut was announced.   This means that Whale Cottage can afford to drop its winter rates by 50 % relative to the summer rate, and it helps to cushion the reduced occupancy. 

World Cup 2010 tickets on sale again

The second phase of ticket sales for the FIFA 2010 World Cup commenced on Monday this week, this time on a first come, first served basis.

Within the first eight hours of ticket sales opening on 4 May, 185 000 applications were received, 100 000 being for individual matches and 85 000 for team-specific matches.   Only 100 000 tickets in total are available for sale in this second phase.   Each individual may apply for four tickets, up to a total of seven matches, to ensure that all ticket applicants have a fair chance of being able to buy tickets. 

At the end of April FIFA notified over 250 000 applicants as to their success in buying tickets for the matches between 11 June and 11 July next year.   The ticket sales in the first phase were done on the basis of a random ticket draw.

The Final in Johannesburg appears to be sold out, and most of the lower priced tickets for the semi-finals in Cape Town and Durban have also been sold.

Two further ticket sale phases will enable soccer fans to bid for tickets.