As the Fourth of December approaches, news in Cape Town revolves more and more around the FIFA 2010 World Cup. As most everyone who is not in a coma in here knows, the draw for the South Africa 2010 World Cup will be held here in Cape Town, and a much anticipated party will be held on that day along one of Cape Town's more famous streets.
Jenny of Norbury Hill kindly passed on an e-mail about the party that will take place on Long Street after the 2010 World Cup Final Draw:
Detailed facts on the Long Street Party
The festivities will start at 12h00 noon with music and cultural performances with a South African and African flavour. These stage performances will be complemented by buskers to embrace the festival theme.
FIFA President Joseph S Blatter will officially launch the FIFA Fan Fest project at 14h00. The Long Street Festival will mimic the fan fest concept that will be used during next year’s football spectacle.
Entrance to the festival is free and we expect thousands of Capetonians to congregate at Long Street to share in the world’s excitement over the Final Draw. Although the festivities start at noon, the real action is only expected to pick up from 16h00. Be sure to make it down and diski dance to CODA’s song Blow Your Vuvuzela.
Volunteers will guide people from the Grand Parade public parking areas to the festival’s five access points in Wale Street, Leeuwen Street, Pepper Street, and Bloem Street.
The hundreds of restaurants and bars in Long Street will continue with normal business, and their staff will be subjected to the same security measures as the visiting public.
FIFA will be here in Cape Town on 4 December 2009 for the draw that will determine who will play whom in the 2010 South Africa World Cup and where. But FIFA does not come to Cape Town without stirring up a bit of trouble.
The FIFA draw for the 2010 World Cup has already caused the Obz Fest, which normally occurs in the first week of December, to be cancelled due to bylaws that were put in place to prevent other events from stealing the 2010 South Africa Football World Cup's thunder. This has even put a damper on a planned march by school children in Salt River to raise awareness of AIDS and HIV, as they can not hold placards during their march, also due to the World Cup bylaws.
Yes, and there's more... and thank you to Paterson House for providing these interesting tidbits! All this relates to business travel. I suppose businesses, besides those who provide accommodation, food, etc. for 2010 World Cup fans, will lay low.
Volume of Travellers expected
The 2010 Soccer World Cup will be approximately 15 times bigger than the 1995 Rugby World Cup. The media contingent that will attend is estimated at 30 000. Business travel is disrupted purely due to the volume of supporters.
All indications are that approximately 220 000 long haul visitors will attend, 180 000 visitors from Africa and an average of 150 000 local supporters. On any match day it is envisaged that 100 000 travellers will need to use a travel commodity i.e. flight or road / rail transportation.
An additional 2 000 buses have been imported (overload on road transport) to carry these supporters. It is predicted that supporters will watch their team play every 3 or 4 days. When their teams are not playing, supporters will frequent the Fan Parks or embark on tours within the city of their choice.
So... I suppose it will be even more crowded in Cape Town than it is during the usual holiday season... a good thing for accommodation providers here.
Fan Parks
Fan Parks are situated in central areas so that general public can watch all the games. Entrance to the Fan Parks is free and it is expected that these Fan Parks will attract a lot of visitors. In Germany 2006 one Fan Park attracted 500 000 spectators to watch one game. To avoid large transport infrastructure expense, training venues will also double as public viewing sites.
Fan Parks in the Western Cape
The Grand Parade Somerset West Road
Stellenbosch Bellville Velodrome
Swartklip Atlantis
Khayelitsha Nomzamo Yethu (Hout Bay)
Training Facilities in the Western Cape
Newlands Rugby Ground UCT Rugby Ground
UWC Soccer Field Bellville Rugby Ground
Stellenbosch Rugby Ground Athlone Stadium
Now, I find this interesting. Does that mean that Newlands Rugby Ground will also double as a fan park? Also, in conjuction with this, there was an article in the Cape Times about the informal traders on the Grande Parade and elsewhere that will be affected by Cape Town's World Cup bylaws. I hope they figure out a way to compensate these traders. Really, why not let them trade? Informal trading is a part of what Africa is all about!
Flights
To date no airline has released any prices or strategies for the World Cup period.
On pre- and post- match-days flights into and out of the venue cities will be overbooked. Due to the sheer volume of travellers, huge delays can be expected.
World Cup teams will use charter aircrafts and plan to use 2nd tier airports however their supporters will use the general airports. These airports will focus on scheduled international and domestic flights.
This is going to be hairy... hope I don't have to go to the airport in June or July next year!
All the major hotel brands within South Africa have contracted with MATCH at a pre-defined room rate and therefore the normal Corporate rates will not be available during this period.
According to FIFA there is an approximate shortfall of 18 000 rooms for the World Cup. This supply and demand scenario allows B&B’s / Guesthouses to offer rooms at a premium.
It is most likely that all car rental companies will go on “stop-sale” for the period of the World Cup and rental cars will be scarce.
Road Closures
It is indicated that there will be limited access and in some instances complete road closures in the areas surrounding the stadium and fan parks. This will make it difficult for travellers to move freely between offsite meetings.
Critical Date
The next critical date for the WC2010 is the 4th December 2009 when the Pool draw is completed. This draw will indicate where the teams will be based and where their supporters will be spending most of their time.
And this critical date is coming up soon here in Cape Town.
Fixtures
The match schedule will be updated after the draw on the 4th December 2009. Games will be played at: 13h30, 16h00 and 20h30. Travellers need to allow for traffic congestion both at the stadium and the Fan Parks. It is advisable to allow 2hrs lead time if travelling to / from these areas.
Here are some recommendations for business travelers during this period:
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR TRAVEL DURING THIS PERIOD:
Do not travel during these periods unless it is critical to travel.
Plan your trip well in advance, changes to a ticket over this period will be extremely difficult and very expensive.
Try to make appointments at a location that is in the opposite direction of a stadium / fan park.
Take flights during the times when the games are being played. Games start at 13h30.
Allow for a minimum of 2 hours to get to the airport in Cape Town and possibly 3 hours for Johannesburg. The congestion on the roads both to and from the airports is going to be chaotic. Plan for delays.
Parking at the airport will be virtually impossible and it is advisable to get someone to drop / collect you from the airports. Transfer companies will be busy with tourists and will also be very expensive.
"We will show the world what they have been missing for the past one hundred years by making this World Cup, the first in FIFA's one hundred year plus history in Africa, the best ever." Danny Jordaan - CEO of the 2010 World Cup - 19 November 2009
As the day approaches for the draw for the 2010 World Cup, football aficionados around the world wait with anticipation to see where and who their countries' teams will play. Soccer websites like BigSoccer.com are already busy theorising who will play whom well before the FIFA draw for World Cup football teams on 5 December 2009.
Cape Town will be the scene for the December draw. It was the clear favourite for this FIFA event, and you just have to look at the breath-taking scenery around which Cape Town was build to understand why. Cape Town is the mother city, the place where the country that became South Africa was born, so it is only fitting that an event of this magnitude should centre around Cape Town.
Yet there have been a couple of hiccups in regards to the chosen teams who will appear in the World Cup next year in South Africa. Most notably, in regards to the Algerian win over Egypt and the French win over Ireland, both matches which put the other side out of next year's Football World Cup. According to a UK website, the following countries qualified for the 2010 Football World Cup:
South Africa (hosts), Japan, Australia, South Korea, Holland, North Korea, Brazil, Ghana, ENGLAND, Spain, Paraguay, Ivory Coast, Germany, Denmark, Serbia, Italy, Chile, USA, Mexico, Switzerland, Slovakia, Argentina, Honduras, New Zealand, Cameroon, Nigeria, Algeria, Greece, Slovenia, Portugal, The Cheating French, Uruguay
As an aside, it is good to see the English supportive of their neighbours across the Irish Sea in relation to the French "hand of frog", though those with a sensitivity towards profanity should avoid reading the comments below the video. To be fair to the French, one French football support said this:
"I'm French and I hope that we will ask to replay this game! In fact, all French football fans want to replay this game! Because, for us, it's a (real) shame and we could NEVER accept this ! We wanted to win but not in this way! It's only the fault of arbitrator and FIFA !! everybody has seen the hand except the arbitrator!"
But it's all over now, and the French are in the World Cup, along with hosts South Africa and thirty other teams. If you want to see the final matches that helped determine the field of 32 teams that will be in next year's World Cup, visit FIFA's website.
Now, if your team got into the World Cup, maybe it's time to start planning your trip to South Africa, and look into accommodation in Cape Town ...
I recently contacted a hotel in Cape Town's southern suburbs to find what kind of price they would charge for accommodation. In particular, I was interested in knowing what sort of prices they would charge during the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Now, this was not an upmarket hotel at which I enquired by any means, but one that seemed to offer mid-priced accommodation in Newlands. I was taken aback when they stated that the price would be R1195 per day... for the room only. Further, they told me that they had no accommodation available over the 2010 World Cup, as it had all been bought up for package deals.
It was then that I realised just how reasonable some of the small accommodation providers in the area were. Offering both bed and breakfast and self-catering options, these smaller providers offered more for a person's money. Most of them are set in idyllic settings, offering an intimate yet private place at which one can lay their head, and more. They offer something that no hotel can offer: a home away from home. Many of these smaller accommodation establishments in Rondebosch, Newlands, Claremont, Kenilworth, and Bishops Court offer accommodation for less than half of what hotels offer! So why would anyone wish to stay anywhere else during their stay in Cape Town, whether it be for business, pleasure, or to follow their favourite World Cup soccer team.
Theatre goers in Cape Town's southern suburbs have frequented the Baxter Theatre since its inception in Rondebosch in 1977. But there is now a new theatre, the New Africa Theatre, that has opened to offer theatre lovers a new venue at which to enjoy performances in Cape Town.
The New Africa Theatre Association (NATA) began in 1987 as a training centre for talented people who could not get into university. Started by Mavis Taylor, a former head of the University of Cape Town's drama school, it began as an academy to teach people the various trades that are needed to put on a theatre performances.
The new box theatre, known simply as the New Africa Theatre, was set up in an old grocery store in Sybrand Park, an area that straddles two areas, Rondebosch and Athlone, that were traditionally "white" or "coloured" areas respectively during the apartheid era. As such, it is fitting that the first major performance would be Transit, a play written by Ian Bruce and directed by Clare Stopford.
f December approaches, news in Cape Town revolves more and more around the FIFA 2010 World Cup. As most everyone who is not in a coma in here knows, the draw for the South Africa 2010 World Cup will be held here in Cape Town, and a much anticipated party will be held on that day along one of Cape Town's more famous streets.
