I am hugely disappointed for 2 reasons this morning....
Firstly, my applications for match tickets in the 2nd phase of World Cup 2010 ticket sales has been unsuccessful. And it's not just me, Yates was unsuccessful in his application as well, so both of us came up empty... I find it hard to believe that we had more luck in the lottery than in the first-come-first-served sales...?
Whilst I understand that these tickets are sold on a first-come-first-served basis, I placed my application for tickets within 60 minutes of the sales phase opening, and I find it difficult to believe that everyone else must have been after the same matches as I was after.
What makes this even more annoying is that I can still go to the FIFA website right now and order the exact same tickets...? What the &@#*..?? There is definitely something wrong with the World Cup 2010 ticket ordering process when tickets that are not actually available are not withdrawn from the ordering process? I wrote an email to the organising committee and got just the standard 'its-not-our-fault' reply, so I guess I'll just try and order again.....
Secondly, now that we have some World Cup tickets, I have started to look at accommodation in both Cape Town and Johannesburg, and guess what...? Yup, there is some pretty horrendous price increases being quoted... I was hoping that by booking over a year in advance that I would avoid some of the more aggressive 'price-gouging' of foreign tourists that I have been warned about. Having attended the all the World Cup tournaments since 1994, I have never seen such blatant price increases before. Whilst I can understand that this is a good opportunity for hotels to profit from having a world-class event in their country, but it is disappointing to see this sort of unethical approach to welcoming potential 'Guests' to South Africa.
For example, the Westpoint Executive Suites in Johannesburg, (http://www.executivesuites.co.za), normally charge a high season rate of 1,300 RAND per night for their 1-bedroom apartments, but during the World Cup that price leaps to 4,200 RAND per night, an increase of a staggering 323%...!
Westpoint are not alone.... An international Serviced Accommodation company called Move & Stay, (www.moveandstay.com), normally charge 11,950 RAND per month for stays of 1 month or longer in their Johannesburg apartments. I have received a recent quote of 63,800 RAND, which represents a pretty incredible 533% increase.
I wonder how many more of this ludicrous quotes I am going to get before finding a professional company that does not want to completely rip me off...? This is just the sort of behaviour that I would expect in a Third World country and I think it reflects poorly on South Africa.
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Stephen,
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting on my blog.
Think about staying safely in a small town like Ladismith for the Cape Town matches. We will be organizing a luxury party bus charter for the CPT and Port Elizabeth matches which we anticipate will cost between R 500 and R1000 per match. A luxury bed and breakfast here costs
R 500 per room for 2 per night.
For Johannesburg, try citylodge.co.za .
I think that a lot of people in the tourist business over here see this as a huge opportunity and it's to be expected that prices will rise - that's supply and demand and there is not enough supply to meet the demand.
ReplyDeleteI disagree that this is due to SA being a third world country. This would have happened in Germany in 2006 if hundreds of thousands hadn't camped out - something that's not an option here as it's the middle of winter for WC2010.