2010 teams set up base in the Cape

By late December 2009, three football teams had confirmed their bookings for base camps in the Western Cape in the Cape Garden Route and Klein Karoo regions.
The teams are, France for the Pezula Resort Hotel & Spa at Knysna, Denmark for the Simola Golf & Country Estate, also at Knysna, and Japan for Fancourt at George. The team from Paraguay has been expressing a strong interest in the Point Hotel at Mossel Bay, but has not confirmed yet.

These areas and Cape Town, Winelands and the Cape West Coast, have gone out of their way to make sure that their venues and facilities are in tiptop shape to not only host the world's football greats, but also leave them with an impression that will draw them back for many years.

Shaun van Eck, CEO of Knysna Tourism, says, "As a top tourism destination, we are an excellent option to teams - the town boasts luxurious accommodation coupled with the wonderful lifestyle that is Knysna. The hosting of a team will be a huge boost for the town and the Garden Route and it has made the hosting of base camps a priority focus. The Knysna Council also decided to upgrade its current public sports facility, Loerie Park, should a team base themselves in Knysna."

André Smith, senior manager of environmental affairs at George Municipality, adds that the city has established a 2010 committee to deal with teams' and other arrangements, including beautification to create a soccer atmosphere. "We are expecting between 15 000 and 20 000 Japanese supporters in George. Extensive work will be carried out to prepare the field surface of their practice venue, the Outeniqua Stadium, for soccer purposes. Indications are that a second team might also choose George as a base camp with Oubaai as their preferred hotel," says Smith.

What was the Africa Destination of the Decade? And what are the Travel Hotspots of Tomorrow?

The safari of the decade: Botswana's Okavango Delta "In the 1990s, the Okavango was still split up into the Moremi Game Reserve and a number of hunting areas - and tourism to the Delta was relatively small. The last decade has seen a steep change: Southern African safaris are no longer the poor relation of East Africa trips, and the Okavango has turned from a backwater to the continent's ultimate safari destination. From 2000 onwards, small, often fabulous lodges began arriving in areas previously reserved for hunting: gradually, over the last decade, we've seen many of these change to be photographic concessions, where hunting is no longer practiced. Safaris are now firmly established in the Okavango as a much more humane money-spinner."


And what's coming next? **The Twenty-Tens/Oh-tens/Teenies/Tenties/Tenners**

Zimbabwe - Chris McIntyre "With the Mugabe era likely to end in the next few years, Zimbabwe's tourism industry is poised to bounce back, and the good news is that its environments are generally in great shape. The wonderful national parks are all situated on land that's difficult or impossible to farm, so they remain largely untouched, while much of the game is apparently in good shape, too - even if a few areas have had high levels of hunting. Recent news has been very encouraging: an apparent upsurge of visitor numbers in 2009, and now a much less unstable, dollar based economy. Once an effective protection plan is re-installed and development returns to the country's people, I can see it taking off fast in tourism terms. Zimbabwe used to have vastly more visitors than either Botswana or Namibia - and it can do so again."

- Chris McIntyre, MD of Africa specialist Expert Africa* (020 8232 9777, www.expertafrica.com)

World Cup 2010: Ticket Applications Hit the 500,000 Mark

As you can all imagine, tickets for the 2010 FIFA World Cup are selling really fast. In fact, on Monday FIFA revealed that the first ten days of the third ticketing sales phase, has seen the number of tickets applied for hit the 500,000 mark.

According to reports at soccernet.espn.go.com, football’s governing body has revealed that 386,300 of those tickets were requested by South African residents, while the other 114,237 tickets applied for came from the rest of the world.

In a recent statement from Horst Schmidt, who is chairman of the FIFA ticketing sub-committee, he said that the latest ticket applications figures are impressive when they are compared to the previous editions of the FIFA World Cups.

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Cape Town Stadium Complete

CAPE TOWN — South Africa's Greenpoint stadium, which has been chosen to host a 2010 World Cup semi-final, was on Monday declared complete.

"This has been worth the wait. People of Cape Town this is our stadium, it is ready for the world," said mayor of Cape Town Dan Plato, during the opening ceremony.

The 68,000 seater stadium boosts the views of the iconic Table Mountain and the historic Robin Island, where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated.

Its 32-months construction process was dogged by labour strikes and faced fierce opposition from enviromentalists who claimed that its existence would spoil the city landscape.

Greenpoint cost 4,5 billion rand (605 million dollars) and is one of ten venues to host the 2010 football spectacle.

Other stadiums already completed include, Moses Mabhida in Durban and Soccer City in Johannesburg.

World Cup 2010 tickets: how to get your seats for South Africa

The World Cup 2010 has sent fans into a frenzy of planning for a trip to South Africa. Here, we show you how to get hold of tickets for the World Cup.

Demand for tickets for World Cup 2010 has surged after the draw for the first round games on Friday.

One million tickets were released on the Fifa site on Saturday, and although 55,000 sold in the first two hours, this is still the most reliable way of getting hold of tickets.

For the 2006 World Cup finals in Germany there were 20 million requests during the first sales phase for 750,000 available tickets.

And the race for tickets for this World Cup is likely to be equally strong – especially as England's first game, in Rustenburg on June 12 against the USA, is to be played in one of the smaller stadiums, with only 5,040 tickets allocated to England fans.

Through the Fifa website

You need to register on the site before being guided through the ticketing process, and then submit your request for tickets. A new sales phase began on Saturday, and runs until Jan 22. Your name will then be entered into the draw.

There were 222,000 applications in the first 48 hours after the draw, but Fifa point out that it doesn't matter when you apply as tickets from this sales phase will be drawn on Feb 1. You can apply for a maximum of four tickets, for seven different matches.

There will be further sales phases beginning on Feb 9 – on a first come, first served basis – and on April 15th.

Tickets will not be posted out but will be available for collection, at designated points in South Africa, from April 2010.

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All Eyes Will Be On Cape Town This Friday

Roads are being cordoned off, stages are under construction and banners are being hung to welcome the thousands of people expected to throng into the city centre.

The draw will be an internationally televised event at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC) to determine the match order of the 32 participating teams.

More than 150 million people from 200 countries are expected to watch the big event. It will be accompanied by a festival on Long Street, which has been organised to give Capetonians a taste of how the fan parks will function.

The Long Street event will feature live entertainment, including top South African artists such as Freshlyground and Jimmy Dludlu and video links to the CTICC, so that revellers can watch the Draw live.

The festival is expected to go on late into the night. The draw will be attended by some 3,000 international guests, including team representatives, FIFA executives.

Football celebrities like Ruud Gullit, David Beckham, Zinedine Zidane and Franz Beckenbauer are some of the football greats who will also invade the Mother City along with sponsors and the international media.

The Long Street festival is expected to attract about 15,000 people and altogether, both events are expected to boost this year’s visitor figure to over a million. The annual switching on of Cape Town’s festive lights in Adderley Street on Sunday kick-started the festive season.

Over 50,000 people gathered in central Cape Town to enjoy the free, open-air concert with artists Ringo Madlingozi, Jozi, Emo Adams, The Rockets, Ready D, Die Broers, Soli Philander and Joe Barber.

Fans enjoyed the ‘Soccer Zone’, near the Heerengracht Circle, where they met players from Ajax CT, Santos FC and Bafana Bafana stars, Matthew Booth and Lance Davids. Other entertainment included a diski dance competition, five-a-side football games and ‘foosball’ play-offs.

According to BuaNews, a dedicated Festive Season Co-ordination Committee, representing various city departments, has been established to oversee the implementation of strategies to contribute towards a safe, clean and enjoyable experience for all visitors and residents during the festive season.