Conde Nast Traveller recently released the results of its’ 24th annual Readers Choice Awards to find the top tourist facilities and destinations in the world. The awards are broken down into favourite country to visit, the best city on each continent, best resorts, islands and hotels. There is also has a category for readers favourite overseas city outside of the UK, in which Cape Town ranked seventh. Seventh! I was flabbergasted, dumbstruck, astounded and quite frankly insulted. Cape Town has some of the finest holiday accommodation in the world at fantastic value, with all the tourist attractions imaginable.
When I heard the results had been released I was not in any particular rush to check them or even that anxious to see them as I just assumed the mother city would be somewhere in the top 5, beaten out by our more traditional European destinations. To be beaten by Sydney though forced me to ask serious questions about the methods by which they went about gathering this data. Evidently they ask their readers to choose their favourites based on ten criteria. This year over 28 000 readers took part; this is apparently a new record. When one considers the number of tourists that float across the sky every day, clogging up the traffic of the cities of their chosen destinations and irritating the locals by asking for directions in loud slow English, then 28000 does not seem like a particularly large amount, and the awards become seemingly inaccurate.
The key to unravelling my apparent frustration at Cape Town’s terrible placing lies in the title of the awards, The Readers Choice Awards – So who exactly is reading Conde Nast Traveller? The magazine was started by Diners Club over half a century ago with to inform its members which locations would accept their credit card. Within a few years it was accepting advertising and became a fully-fledged magazine that was soon bought by Conde Nast. It has been referred to as the Rolls Royce of magazines, which would make it’s reader, well the type of people that would drive a Rolls Royce and the first person that comes to mind is James May, who is to be honest not the type of person that would make the most of a holiday in Cape Town and therefore not the type of person that should be allowed to vote on its ranking in the worlds cities.
If you think this sounds like sour grapes you would be right, and as a life-long Cape resident grapes are something I know all about, albeit they are usually sour anyway and then pressed and put into a bottle, but grapes none the less. Funnily enough when I found out how abysmal Cape Town’s standing was a bottle of the Capes finest was exactly what I needed. I am aware that I am somewhat biased and that my affection for the Mother City may be slightly disturbing, but I really do think that the way the data was gathered does not warrant the type of brouhaha the that awards ceremony received.
The awards ceremony and the publicity that these ranking received is disturbing frankly, it was reported in CNN as well as widely talked about in online travel channels. It is phenomenal and worrying that such a tiny percentage of the tourist market can have such a massive impact on the global tourism industry. What makes this low ranking all the more difficult to stomach is that we were beaten Sydney, as if losing to those sheep loving convicts in the RWC quarter finals wasn’t bad enough they are now falsely lead to believe that they have a city which is more favoured by tourist than us. So about now you are starting to think that you have happened upon the reason for my disappointment at the awards and you would be right.
