Whale Cottage Portfolio Blog

All tickets for the opening match, semi-finals and final match for the 2010 World Cup are sold out, reports the Cape Times.   Team-specific tickets for England, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, Ireland and the Netherlands are also sold out, as are individual match tickets for soccer matches in Cape Town, Nelspruit and Pretoria.

The second ticket selling phase has been underway since the beginning of this month, and just over 100 000 tickets have been sold in this phase to date.

The majority of ticket sales, after those to South Africa, is to the USA, reports USA Today.   Americans have bought 93 300 tickets to date.   The USA is also the top spender in terms of broadcast rights fees, with ABC/ESPN and Univision paying FIFA $325 million for the 2010 and 2014 television rights.

Danny Jordaan, head of the South African World Cup 2010 local organising committee, told an American audience earlier this week that he hopes to prove the doubters about South Africa’s ability to host the World Cup wrong, and to change South Africa’s image:  “It’s about trade.   It’s about investment.   It’s about business.   It’s about tourism.   Those are the stories that we think we want to place on the media platforms.”

To date, 400 000 tickets have been sold for the Confederations Cup, being hosted in South Africa from 14 - 28 June this year.

Cash-strapped South Africans are delighted that the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Tito Mboweni, decreased the interest rate by 1 % point, to 7,5 %, yesterday.

Mboweni announced the interest rate cut a day after the official announcement that South Africa is in a recession, having experienced two successive quarters of negative economic growth.   The economy contracted by 6,4 % in the first quarter of 2009, Mining and Manufacturing taking the biggest knocks, at 33 % and 22 %, respectively.   The category “Wholesale, retail, restaurants and hotels” had the smallest decrease, at 2,5 %, while the construction sector grew by 9 %, reports The Times.

Mboweni made his announcement against the background of a downward inflation trend, expected to average 6,9 % this year and 5,5 % in 2010, with food inflation peaking at 17 % but slowing down (Mboweni blamed a food cartel for the high food inflation); the second quarter is expected to have a lower negative growth rate compared to the first quarter; and the global downturn is showing “tentative signs” of “bottoming out”, according to Moneyweb.

The interest rate cut is the fifth since Mboweni started cutting the interest rate in December 2008.   Consumers are hoping for a drop in the price of petrol next Wednesday too.

The Sweet Service Award goes to Mohammed and to Wilma of the Sunday Times, for helping a customer to subscribe to the paper, after 6 months of frustration in trying to do so via the call centre.   A chance connection to Mohammed in the Human Resources department of Avusa, the company owning the Sunday Times, helped the customer to find Wilma, the person responsible for subscriptions in Cape Town.  Wilma can be contacted at tel 021 488 1823.   The delivery of the Sunday Times has been perfect since contact was made with her.

The Sour Service Award goes to Rocketseed, a company which sells branded signatures to the tourism industry.   The signature has to be designed by a separate company, and then Rocketseed sets it up with telephonic support.  It soon became evident to the user that the design has a weakness in that the “footer” does not follow the e-mail content when an enquiry from a prospective guest is replied to.   For  more than a month the customer tried to get Rocketseed to fix this design error, but received the poorest service from the support staff at Rocketseed.  It appeared that they did not know how to fix the problem, and kept the customer tied up on the phone for hours on end, in trying to load a revised version of the signature.   When the customer requested that a more senior staff member assist with problem, Henry Jonker, a director of Rocketseed, called.   He was extremely arrogant.   His response was to threaten the cancellation of the customer’s annual subscription of the branding service, which had to be paid in full prior to the customer being able to test the signature application.  

The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog.  Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at info@whalecottage.com.   Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog, and in the WhaleTales newsletters on the www.whalecottage.com website.

The British and Irish Lions rugby tour team has arrived in South Africa, to take on various local sides as well as the Springboks in the Castle South Africa 2009 Lions series. 

The double page spread full colour ad for the Series has a banner “The Hunt for Glory”, and details the matches against the Lions team as follows:

30 May:  Royal XV in Rustenberg

3 June:   Xerox Golden Lions  in Johannesburg

6 June:   Vodacom Free State Cheetahs in Bloemfontein

10 June: The Sharks in Durban

13 June:  Vodacom Western Province in Cape Town

16 June:  Southern Kings in Port Elizabeth

20 June: Springboks in Durban

23 June: Emerging Springboks in Cape Town

27 June: Springboks in Pretoria

4 July: Springboks in Johannesburg

“Boktowns” have been created, according to the ad, and in Cape Town it is La Med in Camps Bay, Montecasino in Johannesburg, the Suncoast Casino in Durban and the Springbok Bar in Pretoria.

The tourism effect of the rugby series is clear, with Whale Cottage Camps Bay close to fully booked for the two Cape Town matches.   This is contrary to the IPL, which benefit was not experienced in Camps Bay at all.

Franschhoek-based Chamonix winery won the 2009 Santam Classic Wine Trophy, as well as two gold medals, and a GQ Choice award, in The Classic Wine Trophy Awards last week, chosen by a panel of French judges.

Competition organiser, Christophe Durand, said of Chamonix’s success:  ” Their consistency as an estate over the years has been amazing.  I’m very happy with their victory and the outcome of this year’s competition as a whole”.

Simonsig won the trophy for best sparkling wine for their Cuvee Royale;  Jean Daneel won the Best White Wine Trophy for his Signature Chenin Blanc 2006; Groot Constantia won the Best Red Wine Trophy for the Gouverneurs Shiraz 2006; and Klein Constantia won the Best Sweet Wine Trophy for their Vin de Constance 2004.

The judges stated that they were disppointed with the sauvignon blanc entries, Southern Right being the only gold medal winner for this variety.  

Another Franschhoek wine to do well at the Award was the La Motte Pierneef 2007, which won a gold medal.

Felicity Purchase is the new member of the City of Cape Town’s mayoral committee responsible for economic development and tourism.

Little information is available about Ms Purchase, especially from a tourism perspective.

It will be interesting to see how Ms Purchase and her counterpart in the Western Cape provincial government, Alan Winde, will deal with the relationship between Cape Town Tourism and Cape Town Routes Unlimited.

Cape wines won 34 gold medals at the recent Decanter World Wine Awards, one of the largest international wine award events with over 10 000 wines submitted by more than 2 000 wineries.    The Awards were presented at the London International Wine Fair last week, reports the Cape Times.

South Africa improved its success at the Decanter Awards, with its 34 gold and 130 silver medals.  In 2008, South African wines won 25 gold and 93 silver medals.

Tokara in Stellenbosch won two gold and five silver medals; Cederberg won three gold and a silver medal; Fairview won two gold and two silver medals; Kanonkop won two gold and a silver medals; and Kaapzicht two gold medals.   In addition, Kaapzicht Estate Steytler Vision 2006 Pinotage was named the best South African Red Single varietal in the over GBP 10 category.   Pinotage is a unique South African cultivar, and has been criticised by the international wine media in the past.

The Tokara Walker Bay Chardonnay 2007 gold medal wine was served at the inauguration celebration of President Zuma earlier this month.   The estate’s second brand, Zondernaam, won the second gold medal.

Tanya Kruger, talented chef at Hunter’s Country House outside Plettenberg Bay, has been selected as one of the chefs to represent South Africa in the IKA Culinary Olympics in Germany in 2012, reports The Herald.

Kruger is the winner of the South African 2008 Chaine des Rotisseurs Young Chef’s competition, and represented this country at the international competition in Paris last year.

For the next four years the chefs’ team will practice, meeting monthly.   The Culinary Olympics is the most prestigious international chefs’ competition.  Last year, the South African team was one of only two countries to win a gold medal.

The Sweet Service Award goes to Desmond at Allee Bleue in Franschhoek, his second Sweet Award, who welcomed a regular guest to enjoy a cup of coffee and cake ten minutes before the bistro was due to close on Mother’s Day, even though the staff at the boom and the waiters clearly wanted to discourage the customer from sitting down.    Desmond even offered the customers a second cup of coffee, despite it being after 5 pm already.

The Sour Service Award goes to Interior Collection, a curtain and blind company in Hermanus.   Competitive quotes were obtained in the town, and the same brief for a double track, new curtains and blockout for Whale Cottage Hermanus was set for all companies.  Interior Collection offered the best quote for its blinds and curtains, and a 50 % deposit was paid.   One of the windows requiring a blind was not quoted for by Marie, the owner, and the curtains and blockout were sewn together and hung on a single track, contrary to the brief, barely allowing the curtains to be opened and closed.   The curtains have had to be sent back to be fixed and new tracks have had to be hung, with a further charge of R 10 000 being levied by Interior Collection on top of the R 48 000 price quoted.   Marie did accept a settlement offer of R 5 000 for the additional cost.  Whale Cottage Hermanus has been severely inconvenienced, as rooms have been without curtains for a week at a time.  Marie has been unable to communicate the dates and times on which the curtains will be replaced, and contradicts herself in her communication with different members of Whale Cottage staff. 

The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog.  Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at info@whalecottage.com.   Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog, and in the WhaleTales newsletters on the www.whalecottage.com website.