{"id":21339,"date":"2011-06-06T10:29:41","date_gmt":"2011-06-06T08:29:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whalecottage.com\/blog\/?p=21339"},"modified":"2011-06-15T10:43:59","modified_gmt":"2011-06-15T08:43:59","slug":"getaway-cannot-get-away-with-its-errors-on-cape-whale-coast-route","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisvonulmenstein.com\/blog\/whale-cottage-portfolio\/getaway-cannot-get-away-with-its-errors-on-cape-whale-coast-route\/","title":{"rendered":"Getaway cannot get away with its errors on Cape Whale Coast Route!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In principle it sounded like a tourism marketer’s dream – a nine\u00a0page editorial on the new Cape Whale Coast Route, and a front cover with a Southern Right whale and a headline “Cape Whale Coast 30 cool things to do”.\u00a0 While all coverage is fantastic, it is a shame that the Cape Whale Coast DMO\u00a0and Getaway<\/strong> magazine got it so badly wrong in many respects.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The article commences with a route map of the newly created Cape Whale Coast, an excellent example of joint marketing of an 150 km area that spans Rooi Els to Gansbaai, and also includes Hermanus, Betty’s Bay, Kleinmond, Onrus, Stanford and Pringle Bay.\u00a0 This delineation was created when the municipalities in the\u00a0area were consolidated and the Overstrand municipality was created about three years ago.\u00a0 Linked to this was the creation of\u00a0a joint marketing body for the region, called the Cape Whale Coast Direct Marketing Organisation (DMO),<\/strong><\/span> <\/a>with resultant politics that have been\u00a0detrimental to the tourism industry in this region, with allegations of conflict of interests, and more.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another section of the article describes the annual trek of the Southern Right whales between the Antarctic and the Cape south coast, a journey of 10 – 20 days, as per research conducted by the Mammal Research Institute in Pretoria.\u00a0\u00a0More information about the whales follows, and the guidelines about the distance to be kept from whales.\u00a0 It is in the editorial content that Getaway <\/strong>journalist Fatima Jakoet makes a\u00a0grave error,\u00a0in writing that “The southern right whales stay in our waters for about four to five months (May to September)”.<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Anyone who knows anything about whales will know that they stay in Hermanus until the beginning of December.\u00a0 Ms Jakoet was unable to explain her error, inexcusable for a journalist working for South Africa’s top travel magazine, with a circulation of just under 50000, a readership of\u00a0614000, with 27000 Facebook fans and about 5000 Twitter followers.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The error could have a material effect on the business of the tourism and hospitality industry on the Cape Whale Coast, in a year that is seeing the worst ever occupancy and income.<\/p>\n

Another section of the article is devoted to the Cape Whale Coast, and the annual Whale Festival (this year it runs from 30 September – 4 October).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0For a second time, and on the same page,\u00a0Ms Jakoet makes the error in writing that ‘the whale season usually lasts from May to September’<\/em>.\u00a0 Here\u00a0a further faux pas occurs, in that she writes “so be prepared to pay a little more for accommodation during these months”,<\/em>an absurd statement and clearly unresearched!\u00a0 All accommodation establishments and restaurants are desperate for business, and reduce their rates and prices in the winter months of May – August, increase to Spring rates in September, and to summer rates from October onwards.\u00a0 Once again, this is a material error which can severely affect the tourism industry on the Cape Whale Coast.\u00a0 She adds insult to injury, by writing that one could struggle to find accommodation over the Whale Festival in Hermanus.\u00a0 If this is not enough, Ms Jakoet recommends that one should not come to the Route during the Hermanus Whale Festival : “If you’d prefer to avoid the crowds, it’s best to steer clear of the route during this time”!<\/em><\/p>\n

The article then offers two pages of accommodation, restaurant, and tourist attraction information on the Cape Whale Coast, and Ms Jakoet makes recommendations, and here the trouble really starts.\u00a0 Her recommendations are no surprise, given what has been seen about the DMO Board members in the past, and include the following:<\/p>\n

*\u00a0\u00a0 The Misty Waves Boutique Hotel is listed first in the Accommodation section.\u00a0 The owners of the hotel are the Lerm family, son Clinton being the Chairman of the Cape Whale Coast DMO and Deputy Chairman of the Hermanus Tourism Bureau.\u00a0 Mother Maxie is a Director of both the Hermanus Tourism Bureau and the Cape Whale Coast DMO, and a newly elected DA councillor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

*\u00a0\u00a0 The only restaurant listed for Hermanus is Bientang’s Cave, which has a great location at the water’s edge, but is not the best restaurant in the village, and not the only one with a sea and whale view!\u00a0 The owners of the restaurant are Clinton Lerm’s ex-in-laws.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0\u00a0 Hermanus Beach Villa is owned by Charl de Kock, the Chairman of the Hermanus Tourism Bureau, and he serves on the DMO.\u00a0 On the day that the Cape Whale Coast Route\u00a0was launched, Ms Jakoet requested accommodation in Hermanus, to give her more time to gather information for her article, and Joan-Anne Harris, DMO Director and Marketing Project Co-ordinator, organised the complimentary accommodation at this establishment, richly rewarded through coverage in the article.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0\u00a0 Holidayscape lets self-catering accommodation, and is\u00a0owned by\u00a0Tom Prinsloo, a Director of the Cape Whale Coast DMO.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0 Hermanus Forest Adventures, a quad biking, treetop sliding and paintballing company, belongs to Clinton Lerm, Chairman of the DMO and Deputy Chairman of the Hermanus Tourism Bureau<\/p>\n

*\u00a0\u00a0 Shark Diving Unlimited\u00a0–\u00a0 Marketing Manager Warren Hardenberg is\u00a0a Director of the DMO<\/p>\n

*\u00a0\u00a0 Percy Heywood of Percy Tours is mentioned in the article – he serves on the Board of the Hermanus Tourism Bureau<\/p>\n

Glaring in its absence is the lack of reference to the Whale Crier, an icon\u00a0associated with whale watching, and with Hermanus specifically.\u00a0 Tour operators offering whale watching services, on land and by boat, are not mentioned.\u00a0 It would appear that Ms Jakoet did not take the trouble to visit the Tourism Bureau in Hermanus for information, nor was she proactively provided information about the towns on the Cape Whale Coast by Ms Harris, the co-ordinator of the editorial coverage.\u00a0 Hermanus’ unique point of difference, in offering the best land-based whale watching in the world, is not mentioned in the article!<\/p>\n

The magazine cover ‘shouted’ ’30 cool things to do’ on the Cape Whale Coast Route, but one has to search for this in the feature, as it is not the headline\u00a0of any sub-section.\u00a0 If one counts the number of bold items listed under the half-page “What to do and see” section, one gets to 30, and it includes hiking, swimming, river rafting, tubing and mountainbiking in the Kogelberg Nature Reserve, seeing penguins\u00a0in Betty’s Bay, picnicing in the Harold Porter Botanical Gardens, sandboarding\u00a0on the Blesberg Dunes in Betty’s Bay, canoeing in Kleinmond, playing golf at Arabella, visiting Betty’s Bay chocolatier GaBoLi, winetasting in the Hemel en Aarde Valley, quadbiking, treetop siding and paintballing in Hermanus, hiking in the Fernkloof Nature Reserve, kayaking in the harbour, visiting the Whale Museum and the Old Harbour Museums in Hermanus, playing golf at the Hermanus Golf Club, tasting wines on the Stanford Wine Route, river cruising and horse riding in\u00a0Stanford,\u00a0hiking and camping at Salmonsdam Nature Reserve, shark-cage diving in Gansbaai, taking a boat trip to Dyer Island, visiting Danger Point lighthouse, and\u00a0hiking the Duiwelsgat trail.\u00a0\u00a0No information is presented in the editorial about these activities, other than telephone numbers and website addresses.\u00a0 Interestingly, the same list of 30 activities was the subject of an article by Ms Jakoet in the April issue of Getaway<\/strong>, entitled ’21 things to do on the Cape Whale Coast’ and qualified ‘besides whale watching’, ironic in reducing the importance of whale watching for the route named after the whales!<\/p>\n

I called Ms Jakoet on Friday, and she admitted her errors immediately.\u00a0 She said it was unusual that the article was not proofread by the DMO, their normal procedure.\u00a0 It is surprising that Ms Harris did not chase Ms Jakoet for the article to proofread,\u00a0before it went to print.\u00a0 Ms Jakoet blames this\u00a0oversight on Indaba, which took place at the beginning of May.\u00a0 To make matters even worse, the internal Getaway <\/strong>proofreader is Margie (Snoek) Beves-Gibson, the sister of Ms Harris’ partner David Snoek!\u00a0\u00a0Ms Jakoet assures me that Ms\u00a0Snoek did proofread the article, yet she did not pick up the factual errors in its content.\u00a0 Ms Jakoet had included the Whale Crier, but it was removed by her editor, in giving too much focus on Hermanus, she told me.\u00a0 The errors will be fixed with an apology in the August issue of the magazine, and has already been corrected on-line.\u00a0\u00a0 We checked the on-line article, and the only correction that has been made is the whale-watching period.\u00a0 No other factual errors highlighted in this blogpost have been corrected.\u00a0 Ms Jakoet seemed to tap dance when I asked her on which basis she had made recommendations for the restaurants and accommodation establishments that she had included in the article.\u00a0 She said that she had used her own experience of restaurants, guest houses and self-catering establishments in the area, as well as recommendations from her colleagues, to compile the list.\u00a0 She gave contradictory answers as to whether she had paid to stay at the accommodation establishments\u00a0listed.<\/p>\n

Ms Harris\u00a0has become\u00a0extremely defensive, and hit the roof when she was told by Ms Jakoet that I had called.\u00a0 She became heavy and threatening: “The Getwaway is a personal contact that I have developed over many years of ‘wining and dining’ and you have no authority or right to contact her…Your meddling could do this relationship a lot of damage as in future the Getaway may decide not<\/strong> to give us FREE EXPOSURE again, because of all the phone calls and hassles they will get!!!!… Please BACK OFF and stay out of my business and what I do as\u00a0a volunteer”!\u00a0<\/em> She added in a further e-mail: “I am upset because you contacted MY CONTACT.\u00a0 You have no right to contact them. And as I mentioned this morning you have done MY RELATIONSHIP with them damage – so stay away from them!!!!”.<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0 Ms Harris does not appear to\u00a0understand that, in her position as a Director of the Cape Whale Coast DMO, she is accountable for her actions on behalf of the DMO. Naively she wrote to me: “NONE of the coverage that we received was paid for and thus we had no control over what they decided to print”,<\/em>thereby absolving\u00a0herself from any responsibility for the errors.\u00a0 But she is not truthful in writing this, as Ms Jakoet told me that the DMO was meant to proofread the article, and that this had been discussed with Ms Harris.<\/p>\n

A further bone of contention is the promotional offer, which will appear in the July issue of Getaway<\/strong>.\u00a0 Once again, the page has been provided for free, but prizes to the total value of R 35000 had to be offered.\u00a0 Ms Harris e-mailed tourism bureau members in the area, at short notice, to get them to participate in the give-away.\u00a0 This promotion was handled by Kirsty of Ramsay Media, the publishers of Getaway<\/strong>, and she said that she was given the details about each participant by Ms Harris, and she was merely a ‘go-between’.\u00a0 The contentious part was that Ms Harris only selected 4- and 5-star accommodation establishments to participate in the promotion opportunity, instead of all members.\u00a0 Ms Harris explains her\u00a0discrimination as follows: “Due to the haste of the ‘last minute’\u00a0request of prizes, I was requested to target 4 or 5 star establishments for the Getaway as they have LSM levels of 8 – 10, thus, a more affluent readership that would expect more luxurious accommodation.\u00a0\u00a0 The reality is that a wealthy family who fly down from Johannesburg for the weekend will not appreciate a 3 star establishment”.<\/em>\u00a0 Wow – quite a statement to make!\u00a0 Ms Harris appears to not know the profile of the Getaway<\/strong> reader, certainly\u00a0not being a luxury accommodation guest, but rather a self-drive value for money-seeking South African, probably more likely to be from the Western Cape.\u00a0She also does not clarify who gave her the instruction about the star grading.<\/p>\n

We call on the Cape Whale Coast DMO to appoint a more suitable person to handle the marketing of the Cape Whale Coast, given the poor handling\u00a0by\u00a0Ms Harris\u00a0of\u00a0this whale of a marketing opportunity for the Cape Whale Coast.\u00a0 Miss Harris clearly is not suited to this portfolio, and by her own admission “is not a journalist or a wordsmith”.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

POSTSCRIPT 14\/6<\/strong>: A recent report in the Hermanus Times<\/strong>\u00a0highlighted the uniqueness of the Cape Whale Coast Route, in having “more plant species per square meter than anywhere else on the planet”,\u00a0has three Blue Flag beaches, has one of only three African penguin colonies in Africa, has the best shark diving in the world, according to the Lonely Planet<\/strong>, award-winning wineries, a unique whale crier, and a wealth of whales.\u00a0 None of these attributes of the Cape Whale Coast Route is reflected in the Getaway<\/strong> article.<\/p>\n

Getaway<\/strong>, June 2011\u00a0issue.\u00a0 R29,95. Ramsay Media.\u00a0www.getaway.co.za<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 Twitter: @GetawayMagazine<\/p>\n

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecotatge.com<\/a>\u00a0 Twitter:@WhaleCottage<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In principle it sounded like a tourism marketer’s dream – a nine\u00a0page editorial on the new Cape Whale Coast Route, and a front cover with a Southern Right whale and a headline “Cape Whale Coast 30 cool things to do”.\u00a0 While all coverage is fantastic, it is a shame that the Cape Whale Coast DMO\u00a0and […]<\/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":[32367,11951,11741,7329,11950,2241,3294,3113,32378,2992,11754,2381,11743,1565,11739,129,32377,11748,595,11702,32375,11700,183,11746,2758,11742,11788,11753,1021,11745,11740,3114,11750,9415,11755,252,13,3116,11453,6915,6077,32386,11747,5,2306,11744,1587,11749,32373,11751,1203,11752,376,2750],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\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