to see some classic old post cards of Cape Town
Saturday, July 31, 2010
The world knows where we are now.
Probably the greatest surprise to me over the World Cup period, were the amount of visitors who graced our shores for the football, without having much of an idea of what to expect from our country.
Sounds crazy right ?
I met so many people who had made a last minute decision to come - usually due to their team unexpectedly making it through the next level. These folks literally jumped on a plane and flew to a country that they had distantly heard of and knew nothing about - a bit like me when I think of Kazakstan.
Well, I happened to meet some Kazakstanis, along with Azerbejanians, Georgians, Venezuelans, Russians, Ukrainians, Argentineans, Indians, Welsh, Irish, Americans, Kiwis, Aussies, Czechs, Swedes, Malaysians, Chinese, Scots and even some Kenyans.
The common denominators ? there were three easy ones:
1.They went on tour with me
2.They LOVED football
3.They ALL plan to come back.
Comments like: This has gotta be the best city in the World; Why didnt we know about this wonderful place; I cant wait to come back; Amazing people - so friendly and helpful; I felt quite safe; I didnt know Cape Town produced wine, but the shocker for me was realising that our iconic mountain was not as well known as I thought.
Some of the football visitors honestly didn't have a clue as to what Cape Town had to offer - they were here for one thing and everything else was a pleasant surprise. These were sane, intelligent and rational people.
It got me thinking about a lecture I attended last year. The key speaker was one of the big shots at SA Tourism, which is our state tourism body. I can't remember the exact details, but the vast amount of cash that our government and tourism industry spends on advertising South Africa to the world is just a small fraction of what Germany spends on advertising their offering just to the USA - never mind the rest of the world.
Throwing 20% of our GDP at advertising would do it, but we dont need to worry about that now - the World Cup has exposed us very nicely to the rest of the planet. The laughable thing is that the British press who had a grand time in painting scary scenarios of life in SA, seem to still be at it.
Yesterday my lovely guests from Leicester told me how their friends had cringed in horror when they heard they were coming to Cape Town ( "We read it the papers you know.....gotta be true...innit" type of mentality)
The good news is that about a total of 2.2 billion people watched the championship on telly and hopefully Table mountain is a little better known now.
As for the Kazakstanis...well....... they have Borat!
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