{"id":21682,"date":"2011-06-11T10:16:58","date_gmt":"2011-06-11T08:16:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whalecottage.com\/blog\/?p=21682"},"modified":"2011-06-12T10:59:41","modified_gmt":"2011-06-12T08:59:41","slug":"world-cup-anniversary-focus-on-capeability-infrastructure-benefit-tourism-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisvonulmenstein.com\/blog\/cape-town\/world-cup-anniversary-focus-on-capeability-infrastructure-benefit-tourism-loss\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup anniversary: focus on ‘CapeAbility’- infrastructure benefit, tourism loss!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Today the World Cup 2010<\/a> started a year ago.\u00a0 While many may remember the wonderful 30-day period nostalgically, the hard reality of this largest world event is attracting criticism in its impact on the hospitality and tourism industry, which has reached its lowest low, something other\u00a0mega-event cities have experienced before.\u00a0 The event was commemorated yesterday with the launch of\u00a0a new coffee table book ‘CapeAbility: Stories and Successes from the 2010 FIFA World Cup’.<\/p>\n

The infrastructure benefits of the World Cup cannot be denied : Cape Town has a renewed station building, a world-class airport, and far improved access into and from the city on its N1 and N2 highways.\u00a0It has a beautiful Cape Town Stadium, which has become a tourist icon for the city in itself.\u00a0 It has a most wonderful Green Point Park<\/a>, which was developed next to the Stadium, as well as a general upliftment of the Green Point and Mouille Point area.\u00a0 It led to the roll-out of\u00a0the recently completed and\u00a0far improved\u00a0public transport MyCiti service.\u00a0 It added more international hotel brands to the city’s five-star hotel portfolio.\u00a0 It created an Ubuntu amongst Capetonians and the city’s visitors, on its festive flag-decorated Fan Walks.\u00a0 It positioned Cape Town, and South Africa with it, as a safer country than had been perceived before.<\/p>\n

But the downside appears to outweigh the benefits a year down the line:\u00a0there is no operator for the Cape Town Stadium since\u00a0SAIL Stade de France reneged on its contract with the City of Cape Town.\u00a0 Cape Town ratepayers will have to carry the cost of operating the Stadium, not making ends meet with the few events that have been hosted in the venue since July last year.\u00a0\u00a0 The tourism industry suffered poor pre- and post-event bookings last year, and\u00a0 was led to believe that it would benefit from a tourism boom that would last for years to come.\u00a0\u00a0 The industry was conned by MATCH, the FIFA accommodation booking agency, with massive cancellations just days before the start of the Wold Cup.\u00a0 Surprisingly, the industry is experiencing its worst ever year, and even more surprisingly, Cape Town Tourism told its members yesterday<\/a> that it was to have been expected, given the Sydney experience – a 5-year slump after the 2000 Olympic Games, largely because the city tourism authorities assumed that no marketing was required after the widely publicised event.\u00a0 Cape Town appears to have made the same mistake, an error which is compounded by the poor UK economy, the largest tourism source market for the city, the strong Rand, and high airfares.<\/p>\n

Not unsurprisingly, tourism consultants Grant Thornton, who badly overestimated the World Cup tourism numbers, praised the R40 billion national capital expenditure on the World Cup, the consultancy’s Gillian Saunders saying it was money “well spent, with some areas still to be leveraged”, reports the Cape Times<\/strong>. She states that the infrastructure benefit had ‘significant legacy value leading to a better quality of life and provided long-term valuable assets’.\u00a0 She admitted that the slow recovery from the global recession\u00a0was responsible for the\u00a0lack of the tourism boom which had been predicted.\u00a0\u00a0Yet she said that “a large number of tourism businesses would not have survived the economic slump if it weren’t for the event”.\u00a0\u00a0She reminded the industry that R3,6 billion revenue had been generated and that just more than 100000 tourists had visited the Western Cape, and just more than double this number visited Gauteng.<\/p>\n

Cape Town Tourism has blamed SA Tourism for focusing too much on wildlife and the natural beauty of the country,\u00a0and too little on\u00a0its cities, in its marketing of the country.\u00a0 The World Cup had\u00a0created a greater city focus, but this has not been sustained by SA Tourism in its post-World Cup marketing, Cape Town Tourism says.\u00a0 To strengthen brand Cape Town, Cape Town Tourism proposes that the “city’s urban identity, innovative outlook, entrepreneurial spirit, academic excellence and pioneering medical and science sectors must be added to the brand palette in order for it to effectively compete in the domestic and global market”, in addition to its leisure tourism positioning, it is reported in BizCommunity.com<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The Cape Argus <\/strong>yesterday ‘shouted’ in a headline:”Post-World Cup tourism boom ‘non-existent'”, stating that the benefits\u00a0have been\u00a0the international performers who held concerts in the Stadium,\u00a0the city’s improved infrastructure, and the survival of\u00a0a number of tourism businesses.\u00a0 It quotes Cape Town Tourism as saying that Cape Town is in a ‘brand vacuum’.\u00a0 The annual operating cost of the Stadium is quoted as being R57 million.\u00a0 Two concerts have been booked, and a further two are in the pipeline, according to the city’s new head of Tourism, Grant Pascoe.\u00a0\u00a0 Talks with Western Province rugby continue, he said.\u00a0\u00a0 He added that the city is receiving more event applications than it did prior to the World Cup. Developing the Fan Walk into a 24\/7 facility\u00a0is also being considered.\u00a0 The oversupply of hotel accommodation can be attributed to nine new hotels with 1500 rooms in total, which were built for the World Cup, says Dirk Elzinga, Chairman of FEDHASA Cape.\u00a0 He naively states that many hotels have already received repeat World Cup business, and that the ‘extremely low occupancies’ of some hotels ‘was normal for the off-season’!<\/p>\n

Launched by Premier Helen Zille and Mayor Patricia de Lille, the ‘CapeAbility’ book documents the ‘planning, delivery and effect’ of the World Cup on the Western Cape, says BizCommunity.com.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0 The book “makes every effort to extract honest lessons to understand the hosting of such mega-events better.\u00a0 It is designed therefore not as a memento of the event, but a review of what worked, what didn’t and what could be done better and become a guide to hosting future events”.\u00a0\u00a0 “The book is meant to play\u00a0a marketing role and points out that it is crucial that opportunities, such as the World Cup, are converted into more than just short-term profits for a small tourism and events sector, but into huge brand building opportunities for a country”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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

Today the World Cup 2010 started a year ago.\u00a0 While many may remember the wonderful 30-day period nostalgically, the hard reality of this largest world event is attracting criticism in its impact on the hospitality and tourism industry, which has reached its lowest low, something other\u00a0mega-event cities have experienced before.\u00a0 The event was commemorated yesterday […]<\/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":[3,124,22,21,11],"tags":[11846,32367,2446,769,11851,32366,32397,85,11845,257,4826,5240,5722,320,18,857,9513,11855,530,666,4685,27,5226,5720,261,23,11852,775,5241,11847,11848,11857,5364,7639,3679,662,727,910,11850,524,542,2773,11849,5632,9162,32387,11856,5785,531],"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