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Hello
It's that time of year again! We wish you and your loved ones a very Merry Christmas and a Happy, Safe, healthy and Prosperous New Year. For those who are working during the peak season because it's your busiest time of year, we hope it exceeds your expectations. If you're fortunate enough to be going on holiday and are able to get away, travel safely.
  If anything stands out over the past year, two things probably really rise above the rest:
- The incredibly competitive & professional spirit of Capetonians (supported by South Africans from across the country and a global network of friends) that saw the city garner two major awards. Yes, there was the "World's Top Destination" and scores of other awards but the two which really count are World Design Capital 2014 and Table Mountain's New 7 Wonder of Nature status. Both introduce a paradigm shift in the way people around the world will think about Cape Town. One must wonder if other SA towns work hard enough.
Related: World Design Capital 2014 | The New 7 Wonders of Nature are...
- The other was the widespread failure of tourism authorities around the country to come up with concrete plans to mitigate against the aftermath of the 2010 World Cup and the global recession. Is leadership missing and are we seeing people who don't understand their jobs?
Special Offer
SPECIAL CHRISTMAS 2011 MADNESS. Celebrating 16 years of successful trading, the owners of this Award Winning Country Retreat in rural Noordhoek, located between the False Bay beaches of Fish Hoek & Simonstown & the Atlantic beaches of Noordhoek, Kommetjie & Scarborough, is offering a special on their Garden BnB Cottages.
R535.00 p/p sharing per day (including breakfast & VAT). (This was our rate in 2008!!!!) Current rack rate R675.00 p/p sharing per day.
This is a 20% discount during peak season!!! And we will give each couple booking this special a bottle of our lovely Afton Grove house wine on arrival – free.
T & C – Bookings of 3 or more nights during this period. This offer does not include Self Cater units. Please note our policy on children - 10 years and older. Offer runs from now until 15 January 2012. When booking please quote CapeInfo special. This special is unfortunately not available to the trade.
More on Afton Grove Country Retreat
DIRECTORY
New Directory Search facility
CapeInfo is introducing a new way of searching for accommodation establishments, by their map location and organised into regions, towns and suburbs. Click Hotel accommodation in Cape Town's Atlantic suburbs to see an example.
At the bottom of that page, you'll see links to other towns and areas that have already been added. New areas are being added on a daily basis.
SURVEYS
National tourism survey
The survey, which ran over the past month, attracted about 200 respondents of which 69% were from the Western Cape and 78% were in the accommodation sector. Click here for the online summary.
The average accommodation occupancies were interesting. If 2008 was regarded as one of the best years ever, the drop since and especially between 2010 and 2011 (just 1.7%) doesn't reflect the level of angst the industry often portrays. Was the goodwill of 2010 capitalised upon?
| Average accommodation occupancies |
|---|
| 2008 |
2009 |
2010 |
2011 |
| 49.62% |
46.42% |
46.89% |
45.2% |
Looking ahead, 62.5% were either very or slightly optimistic.
| Looking at the coming summer season |
|---|
| Very optimistic |
Slightly optimistic |
Unsure |
Slightly concerned |
Very concerned |
Dire straights |
| 24.0% |
38.5% |
13.5% |
15.5% |
7.0% |
1.5% |
Regarding membership of a Destination Marketing Organisation (DMO), 77% of respondents were members of one. The majority with 53% of respondents felt their local tourism office was not doing a good job or felt they didn't have an effective DMO. The only DMO that repeatedly came up for praise was in Knysna.
Here one needs to understand that, in most provinces, local tourism offices are politically-driven and hardly serve the products owners' best interests. Active memberships are a rarity.
Strangely, given the very successful AGM Cape Town Tourism (CTT) held recently, nearly 39% of the responses from Cape Town felt they do not have an effective DMO. (This is 10% higher than the provincial average.) But then Tourism Western Cape MEC Alan Winde pointed out that CTT only represents a small portion of the city's tourism-related businesses.
| Do you have a destination marketing organisation that effectively markets your destination? |
|---|
| Yes we do and they're doing a good job |
14.0% |
| Yes we do and they're doing okay |
32.5% |
| Yes we do and they're NOT doing a good job |
17.5% |
| We don't have an effective local DMO |
35.5% |
And then there was the question about SA Tourism:
| Rate South African Tourism’s performance in terms of international marketing of South Africa |
|---|
| Excellent |
Good |
Average |
Poor |
Don't know |
| 1.51% |
18.59% |
38.19% |
27.64% |
14.07% |
This was probably an unfortunate question because most respondents were not in a position to answer with any degree of knowledge. The question suggested by Roshene Singh, SAT's chief marketing officer, unfortunately only arrived after the survey was sent out and would have been far more enlightening:
"Is there any interaction with SA Tourism both with the international and domestic marketing campaigns. If not, why not?"
We wrote to Roshene asking to do a story on this, without response. Roshene, when you're ready...
SA Tourism is doing some interesting things. Last week, William Price, SAT's Global Manager: E-Marketing asked his Facebook friends for their comment on a new hub they are still working on. It's world-class, knock-your-socks-off stuff! Click here to have a look at it.
A more comprehensive analysis of the survey will be published shortly.
We referred to criticism of DMOs in our report on the Tourism Survey, but here's we we put some flesh on the bone.
Joburg Tourism Company agreed to participate in the survey to increase responses from Gauteng. And they did ask a claimed 8,000 subscribers to participate by clicking on a link in their newsletter. But the link -- click here -- takes one to their Travel Information page. We pointed the error out and they offered to add a banner but never bothered to correct the incorrect URL!
Limpopo Tourism & Parks -- we've been trying to work with them for three years, with no success. It seemed like a "Halelujah" moment when they agreed to work with us on the survey... but then all actions just disappeared into the ether of emails. We're told they are embarking on a roadshow to discover why the province isn't getting it's share of international tourists. Well, a junket is as good as any way of spending money when you don't know what to do... . The fact is local government is clueless -- read The sustainability of Limpopo’s towns -- while private product owners are doing a largely excellent job.
That's citizen's money -- your money -- that's being wasted.
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