Marketing Clive Simpkins
IF South Africa is serious about hosting the World Cup and, more distantly, the 2004 Olympics, we’re going to have to rectify accommodation and infrastructure deficiencies. If not, our marketability as a big-event venue is at stake.
I was in Cape Town for the opening of parliament. Weeks ahead, there was virtually no accommodation available. I’m not talking five-star accommodation: simply accommodation, period.
My zealous travel agent eventually found a place for me at the Breakwater Lodge at the University of Cape Town Business School complex on the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront.
I’m glad I landed up there by default. It was my first stay in budget accommodation and it was an interesting and positive experience.
The rooms are small and the bathrooms miniscule, yet they are not out of line with what one might encounter in space-challenged European pensions. The decor is certainly minimalist, but given that it’s RDP-kosher at just R133 per night, it’s extraordinarily good value. I was impressed enough to fill out the guest questionnaire, suggesting they install ceiling fans since there’s no airconditioning.
Bravo to the Cape Town Business School for their entrepreneurial solution to expensive and frequently unnecessarily luxurious accommodation.
But to get back to the point, which is a scary one given the imminent World Cup: the opening of parliament (not everyone’s cup of tea) succeeded in wiping out Cape Town’s available accommodation. Plans are afoot, according to local media, to have 400 additional hotel rooms available for the World Cup tourists. Are they kidding?
I witnessed guests in hotel reception areas saying they’d be happy to stay in private homes, just as long as they had somewhere to sleep and shower.
All this means there’s a huge potential market for something we as South Africans are not accustomed to doing — having tourists in our homes.
Cape Town and its city fathers and mothers are going to have to get off their collective butt and get the city organised for a tourist swamping. The local Olympic bidding committee must be nuts to be considering dumping Raymond Ackerman from the organising team now that, as he hyperbolically puts it, “the dream has become reality”.
Voor op die wa or premature he may be, but his skills and, dare I say, his sandpaper personality qualities, are exactly what’s needed to bulldoze through complacency and bureaucracy.
Civil servants should be very wary of muscling in on territory with which they are probably unfamiliar. Unless of course they go the new, officially sanctioned chutzpah route and get Winnie Mandela to call another conference, to pick the brains of folks experienced in gearing up for an Olympics.
We’ve been out of the international mainstream for so long that we’ve clearly lost touch with the macro-scale thinking needed for handling world-class events. Enthusiasm alone will not carry the day.
If we have any sense, we’ll use free enterprise brains to solve accommodation and other problems.
If we cock up on the Rugby World Cup, it goes without saying we can bid adieu forever to an African Olympics.