{"id":11779,"date":"2010-09-01T10:59:18","date_gmt":"2010-09-01T08:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whalecottage.com\/blog\/?p=11779"},"modified":"2010-09-03T00:01:21","modified_gmt":"2010-09-02T22:01:21","slug":"whale-coast-tourism-dmo-refuses-to-make-minutes-a-whale-able","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisvonulmenstein.com\/blog\/whale-cottage-portfolio\/whale-coast-tourism-dmo-refuses-to-make-minutes-a-whale-able\/","title":{"rendered":"Whale Coast tourism DMO refuses to make minutes a-whale-able!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>For the past six weeks all attempts at obtaining minutes of two Special General meetings called to change the Constitution of the Cape Whale Coast Destination Marketing Organisation (DMO) have failed, with an e-mail\u00a0from its Vice-Chairman, Daniel Acker, refusing access to the minutes both in my capacity as a member of the Hermanus Tourism Bureau and as a writer of this blog, without approval at the\u00a0next\u00a0Board meeting!\u00a0 We question what the Cape Whale Coast DMO is trying to hide by not making the minutes of the two meetings available.\u00a0 Maybe the\u00a0Cape Whale Coast\u00a0payoff line ‘wonders never cease’ is apt, given that the DMO is working with municipal funding generated from Overstrand ratepayers, and therefore transparency should rule!<\/p>\n

More than two years ago the Cape Whale Coast DMO was established by the Overstrand Municipality, which is responsible for the municipal services of the area stretching from Rooi Els in the west to Gansbaai in the east.\u00a0 The DMO is based in Hermanus, and\u00a0half of the Board members are from Hermanus, under the Chairmanship of Misty Waves Hotel Manager Clinton Lerm.<\/p>\n

When the Cape Whale Coast DMO was established, its constitution automatically made all business owners along the Overstrand members of the DMO, if they were paying rates and taxes.\u00a0 No membership fee was payable.\u00a0 The DMO’s main task, as per its name, was to market the Overstrand towns as a joint tourism destination and to manage the tourism bureaus in each of these towns .\u00a0 The same constitution contained a directive that a CEO would be appointed, to manage the DMO.\u00a0 This appointment still has not happened.\u00a0\u00a0 This means that a Board of 14 Directors manages a Section 21 company with\u00a0only one\u00a0staff member, and therefore the directors of the Board have taken over management positions for the DMO.\u00a0 For example, Lerm’s mother Maxie handles Marketing and Public Relations for the DMO, and Clinton Lerm and Daniel Acker (of People Management Solutions Group, a labour\u00a0practitioner in Hermanus, with no tourism business interests)\u00a0represented the DMO in May\u00a0at\u00a0the ITB tourism trade show in Berlin,\u00a0and another in Russia (an insignificant tourism\u00a0market for Hermanus!).<\/p>\n

Earlier this year the DMO changed\u00a0its Constitution of 28 November 2007, at a second Special General meeting\u00a0held on 8 March at the Lerm’s Misty Waves Hotel,\u00a0with a resolution\u00a0seconded by Chairman Clinton Lerm’s father and Director Maxie Lerm’s husband Henry\u00a0(after a first\u00a0Special General Meeting\u00a0on 1 March had failed due to\u00a0not attracting a required quorum of 100 attendees – only 14 members attended).\u00a0 The change to the constitution was motivated to the DMO members on the basis of the changes made to the ‘Municipal Finances & Companies Act’ (no such Act exists – it is called the Municipal Financial Management Act, and it does not appear to contain any clauses that would have necessitated the constitutional changes made), the minutes of the meeting of 1 March stated!\u00a0 \u00a0The major change was that\u00a0Overstrand ratepayers no longer were automatically members of the DMO, and allowed\u00a0the DMO to set up membership of its tourism body in competition to the tourism bureaus in the Overstrand area.\u00a0\u00a0 The minutes of the 8 March meeting are very brief, and do not state who attended the meeting – bizarrely the Constitution allows a second Special General Meeting to be held a week after the first one if it fails to attract a quorum, and can conduct its business as long as at least one member is present!<\/p>\n

What attracted attention to\u00a0and the first criticism of the DMO was that the DMO has set up a kiosk near the key whale-watching area\u00a0in Hermanus, from which it was taking accommodation bookings only for its members, and not for all members of the Overstrand tourism bureaus.\u00a0 These members\u00a0are now asked to pay a double membership, to belong to both bodies, yet each tourism bureau reports to the DMO, an unheard of model of tourism marketing, if Cape Town Routes Unlimited, the provincial marketing body,\u00a0is the role model for the DMO.\u00a0 Even more curiously, the Hermanus Tourism Bureau, which has an unfortunate location at the old railway station building, had to vacate its offices due to construction work close by, and was not given the kiosk, so that it can be easily\u00a0found by tourists requiring accommodation and other tourism information.<\/p>\n

Even more odd is that as a result of two competing tourism bodies in Hermanus, the town now has two whalecriers!\u00a0\u00a0 The original whalecrier of Hermanus, who was an appointee of the Hermanus Tourism Bureau, had his appointment terminated due to an offence, just as the DMO was heading for Berlin.\u00a0 Desperate to have a whalecrier on show, the DMO appointed the whalecrier, and took him to Berlin at short notice.\u00a0 He has been appointed by the DMO to man its kiosk, and the Hermanus Tourism Bureau has appointed its own whalecrier!<\/p>\n

Late last\u00a0year we questioned these actions of the DMO<\/strong><\/span>,<\/a>coupled with the conflict of interest in Clinton Lerm being both the Chairman of the Hermanus Tourism Bureau and of the DMO.\u00a0 This resulted in a letter from the DMO’s lawyers, threatening legal action.\u00a0 Nothing came of this threat, probably as the DMO management realised that a number of dissatisfied Overstrand tourism bureau members feel as I do.<\/p>\n

In July the DMO\u00a0held its AGM, and on the basis of its constitutional amendment, disallowed any Overstrand tourism bureau members from attending the meeting if they did not\u00a0hold DMO membership, and were also not allowed to be nominated or elected to the Board of the DMO.\u00a0\u00a0This is when I started asking questions, requesting a copy of the DMO Constitution (previously this was freely available on the Overstrand website www.overstrand.gov.za<\/a>), and the minutes of the meetings approving the constitutional changes.\u00a0 It took four weeks to receive the e-mailed copy of the Constitution, and two days ago the following officious and somewhat threatening e-mail was received from Daniel Acker (all correspondence had been addressed to Clinton Lerm!):<\/p>\n

“This response is done without prejudice of the rights of the author, Cape Whale Coast Destination Marketing Organisation (herein after referred to as ‘CWC DMO’), or the Overstrand Municipality<\/span>. All rights of these personae therefore remain reserved herein.<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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Your email herebelow (sic) has been read, and the tone & content thereof has been noted. <\/span>We place on record herewith that we shall not respond thereto in full, at this time, and reserve the right to do so at a later stage and in the appropriate forum. <\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Regarding your request, related to the minutes ‘<\/span>minutes that approved the change of the Whalecoast DMO’ . <\/span>We assume that you refer\u00a0 herein to the minutes related to changes to the Constitution that were presented to, and approved by, the Counsellors (sic) of the Overstrand Municipality. <\/span>These minutes are available to members of the CWC DMO, and our records show that neither you, nor your establishment, are members of the CWC DMO. Your request in this regard shall therefore have to\u00a0be tabled at the next full board meeting, for consideration.”<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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What the members of the tourism bureaus in the Overstrand want is to be part of the DMO by\u00a0virtue of their membership of the tourism bureaus which report to the DMO, and that bookings will be taken at the kiosk for all members of tourism bureaus in the Overstrand at no charge of membership, but on payment of a standard 10 % commission of the booking value (the DMO charges 12% commission in addition to its membership fee).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Neither the old\u00a0nor the amended constitution of the Cape Whale Coast gives the DMO the duty to run a tourism bureau in opposition to those already operating in the Overstrand.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the Constitution does not prescribe that nominees for the Board must be members of the DMO (for example, a representative of the Overstrand Municipality is specified as having to be\u00a0a director), nor does it prescribe that only DMO members can vote for the election of its Board of Directors, or on any other matter – it was confirmed that Hermanus Tourism Bureau members were not allowed to be nominated as Directors, nor voted for at the recent DMO AGM, according to an e-mail sent to me by Daniel Acker.\u00a0\u00a0 Members furthermore question why the Misty Waves Hotel features so prominently as the venue of the DMO meetings, and\u00a0how two co-owners of the hotel can serve on the DMO Board, one of them handling the PR and Marketing for the DMO.\u00a0\u00a0Whilst the Constitution defines the role of the Chairman of the DMO to be to\u00a0lead\u00a0the Board, to induct the directors, to plan meetings, and to ‘support the CEO’, it is questioned why Chairman Clinton Lerm, and not his mother Maxie,\u00a0went to Berlin and Russia to represent the DMO, and why Daniel Acker had to go as well.\u00a0\u00a0The duplication in tourism offices and in whale criers is also questioned, all being wasteful expenses.<\/p>\n

It would appear that pressure on Chairman Clinton Lerm may be leading to some changes, and it is rumoured that he has resigned as Chairman of the Hermanus Tourism Bureau, due to the conflict of interests in heading both bodies, something we pointed out in our blog post of 28 December already.\u00a0However, he has not yet formally announced his resignation, nor confirmed it when we requested this of him by e-mail.<\/p>\n

POSTSCRIPT 2\/9<\/strong>:\u00a0 The Comments section for this blog post makes for interesting reading, in setting out two points of view –\u00a0two guest house owners’ perspectives, who argue along the lines of this post, and that of a Director of the Cape Whale Coast DMO, who protects the interests of the DMO.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the Hermanus Tourism Bureau has e-mailed its members an article which appears in the Hermanus Times <\/strong>today, written by Clinton Lerm.\u00a0 It justifies what has happened constitutionally, and announces that members of the Overstrand tourism bureaus will automatically become members of the DMO, once this constitutional change has been approved at a Special General meeting of the DMO.\u00a0 Taking bookings at the Market Square kiosk for all Overstrand tourism bureau members is also receiving the DMO’s consideration – we applaud the DMO for listening to their “customers”, and wonder why this was not dealt with correctly from the word go!<\/p>\n

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Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com<\/a><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the past six weeks all attempts at obtaining minutes of two Special General meetings called to change the Constitution of the Cape Whale Coast Destination Marketing Organisation (DMO) have failed, with an e-mail\u00a0from its Vice-Chairman, Daniel Acker, refusing access to the minutes both in my capacity as a member of the Hermanus Tourism Bureau […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[124,75,22,21],"tags":[32367,854,1591,108,2241,32378,2992,2139,6859,7047,3353,5912,1565,7056,32377,1030,595,7055,7054,7084,7052,1021,7045,3115,7058,7048,7049,7053,5934,7057,3116,2154,7051,7046,5932,7059,1721,7050,32373,7060],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t