Blog - Cape Town Holiday Accommodation - Places to Stay in South Africa

At nearly 2,700ft the Burj Dubai super skyscraper is the World’s (newest) tallest building. And it’s not just a few inches taller by means of a pointy bit on top, it’s gigantic. More than 1,000ft taller than it’s nearest rival, Taiwan’s Taipei 101. Here’s a few facts to make your eyes water.

• Temperatures at the top are up to 10C cooler than at the bottom
• 76th floor - The highest swimming pool in the world
• 158th floor - Plans for a mosque that will make it the most elevated place of worship in the world
• 3.5 times taller than Canary Wharf and twice as tall as the Empire State Building
• Estimated £1bn dollars to build
• Air-conditioning system requires equivalent of melting 12,500 tons of ice per day
• The double deck cabin elevators travel at 40mph
• Laid end to end the 31,400 tons of steel rebar would stretch a quarter of the way around the world
• The Burj Dubai will be visible 95km away
• 124th floor - The world’s highest observation deck
• 58,900 cu yd of concrete were used. The weight of 110,000 elephants
• Electricity usage in the tower will be the equivalent of having 500,000 100W light bulbs on at the same time
• Took 22 million man hours to complete

Dubai seems to have gone skyscraper crazy and is planning another super skyscraper, the Al Burj. Estimates of it’s height range between 700m and a staggering 1km. But the question however remains, with over 49 office floors largely unoccupied at the Burj Dubai, will these buildings also gain the titles of the world’s tallest white elephants?

Whatever happens, I love them. Role on the next battle for the World’s Tallest building with all it’s jaw dropping facts and stats.

In the last few days budget airline Ryanair have announced that they will be introducing smokeless cigarettes for passengers. Smoking has been banned on commercial flights since the 1990’s but in a recent suvey 24,000 of their passenegers indicated that they would like to light up during a flight. The smokeless cigarettes, which ironically you don’t light up, release a small amount of nicotine to the user and produce no harmful chemicals or toxins to those around them.

Personally I’m slightly bemused. I can see that it would reduce stress levels of die-hard smokers who find it difficult spending two hours between smokes but there are hundreds of patches and chewing gums that deliver the same nicotine hit without the physical presence of a look-a-like cigarette. Instead of selling them a pack of smokeless cigarettes for around £5 why not give them some nicotine gum. I also object to the visual aspect of smokeless cigarettes, they look like toys .. my children will be intrigued, they will ask questions and although the smokers will be idly unaware due to the relaxed nicotine state, I will be two rows behind explaining to my children for the entire flight what they are and why they can’t have one. Ryanair should, in my opinion, conduct another survey of irritated parents then maybe offer free nicotine chewing gum instead.

I’ve been asked many times to give my opinion on how much extra Vacation Rental owners should charge during the month of the World Cup in South Africa. The answer is a simple case of supply and demand but how do you work out what the supply and demand will be? Here’s some pointers.

1. How many extra visitors will there be?
An estimated 3.5 million people will be traveling to and from the 9 World Cup stadiums during June and July next year. A conservative estimate of 300,000 extra visitors will visit South Africa purely for the World Cup, mainly from Europe and the US. The draw for the finals takes place in Cape Town on December 4, 2009 and this will, in many respects, dictate how many visitors there will be in each of the 9 locations. Look out for England, Germany, Italy and Spain. All of these teams carry a huge following and will create a big demand for bed spaces.

2. How close are you to the stadium?
This is very important. The closer you are the more you can charge. If you are within walking distance then you could possibly charge 100% more than your normal ‘peak’ rate. This rate tails off the further from the ground you are. For example in Kommetjie (35km away) you could be looking at a reasonable 25% increase on your normal rates.

3. How many available beds are there given the time of year?
This is the most interesting factor. For large tourist destinations such as Cape Town and Durban there will be plenty of choice and availability. (Even despite it being popular with visitors from Gauteng at that time). Availability is generally high and depending on the draw, demand for bed nights could be lower than expected, so be sensitive to this factor when selecting your ‘World Cup’ rates. On the flip-side smaller towns like Nelspruit and Rustenburg could be overun with extra visitors, especially if 2 big European teams are drawn to play there. These towns could expect an extra 60,000 visitors for a single game and availability will be scarce. This is actually a concern of the organisors and for the casual renters it could be a great opportunity to make a killing.

And that’s it in a nutshell. Be wary of the draw. Predict the migration of visitors between games and don’t be greedy. It’s best to get an extra 25% than nothing at all. And also fill the beds early. If you decide to leave it to the last minute thinking you can charge a premium then my advice is don’t. It’s a risky strategy and you could be left empty handed particularly in the major towns.

Tags: Cape Town, Nelspruit accommodation, Rustenburg accommodation, World Cup, World Cup Accommodation
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Here at OL HQ we’re very excited to announce the launch of zoofish.com, a specialist website service for Holiday Home Owners. It’s fab because you don’t need to know anything about websites because we do all the work for you. Here’s how it works:

1. Choose a design.
We’ve got lots of fab designs to choose from. And if you don’t like them, no problem, we’ll just design something especially for you.

2. Choose a colour.
Select one of our custom colours for your design. Again if you’d rather have your own colours then no problem, just tell us what they are and we can do that too.

3. Tell us which holiday rental sites your currently listed on.
We’ll gather all your info and send it to you in a word document. You then check your details, add or edit them as you wish and email it back together with as many photos as you like.

4. Sit back and relax while we build your site.
Our ace development team will then weave their magic and fit your copy and pics to the design of your choice. Within a few days you’ll have your very own, unique and super cool holiday website for a fraction of the cost of traditional web design agencies.

We’ve been building websites for some of the world’s biggest brands for over 20 years so we know what we’re doing. We also know the holiday rental industry inside out and are experts in knowing what holidaymakers want to see. The whole package costs just R3,900 (£450 UK, $690 US) and is payable as either a one-off fee or in 12 monthly installments making it a little easier on the pocket.

There’s now no excuse for not having the time or money to build your own holiday website. zoofish.com - we do the work so you don’t have to.

This is what I love about Cape Town and why I think surfers should be part of the environmental agency impact team from now on. All week they’ve been getting very excited about the storms about to hit Cape Town. 16-18m swell, 70km/h North Easterly winds (or was it South Westerly .. not sure) and high spring-tide, which all makes for some pretty awesome and hectic waves to throw themselves off and into in the coming days. Read more

I love facts and stats and on Friday The Guardian Newspaper (where I incidentally used to work) published a new South Africa country profile. No long prose, no fluffy narrative just a good old fashioned stat sandwich with a healthy topping of ‘wow, I didn’t know that’ facts to finish. You can read the full profile here but here’s just a few of my faves to be getting on with:

• Modern humans have lived here for more than 100,000 years
• Size: 470,693 square miles
• Population: 48,687,300 (24th largest in the world)
• Population mix: Africans (blacks) 79%; Europeans (whites) 9.6%; Other (11.5%)
• Average life expectancy: Male 50, Female 53
• Average number of children per mother: 2.7
• Foreign tourist visitors per year: 8,508,806 (yip, and they all need somewhere to stay)
• Media freedom index (ranked out of 173): 36

Take a look at your availability calendar (if you have one). Are you fully booked? Do you expect to be fully booked? For all those empty bednights why not cut the price and offer a late deal. Work out the the lowest price you’d except to make it worth your while. Factor in your changeover costs such as maid service, paperwork, welcome basket etc Decide what you’re minimum stay would be. For some holiday rentals offering Late Deals is only cost-effective when 2 days or more are booked. Then all you have to do is:

1. Register (if you’re not already) on onelocation.com
2. Login and click ‘Add Late Deal’ (You can only add late deals to properties that are live on the site)
3. Enter start / end dates, select the offer price and hit submit.

That’s it. There’s no approval process so your late deal listing gets published instantly and the great thing is you can edit the offer price as the day of the booking gets closer with the click of a button.

Phewee! After months of blood, sweat, tears, fighting and heavy drinking we’ve launched the site. There’s still a few bugs to fix and a few user problems to iron but the guys (and girl!) are working 24/7 to make sure not too many people see them! Just a reminder to bookmark this page or subscribe to the updates, we’ve got loads of cool tips, marketing advice and great stories to share over the coming months and years. So without further ado … let’s get this show on the road.

btw just a quick reminder that we’re giving away 100 Free annual subscriptions to the site at the moment and they’re going pretty fast so tell your friends to register their property before they all go.

2009 promises to be a fab year for owners of holiday accommodation in Cape Town. Why? Because onelocation finally (sheesh about time too!) opens it’s doors. We’ve seen a couple of new years come and go since we first thought of the idea but this time the champagne corks and fireworks are for real. Read more

Howzit, Hello, Aloha and Kia Ora (hello in Maori and a really cool series of TV ads in the UK over 20 years ago for orange cordial) to onelocation.com. So what is this ‘blog chitty chatty’ thing all about? It’s just a place where we can share some creative thinking [and some 'not so' creative thinking] about how effective [and cheap] online based media and intelligent consumer focussed marketing can be as well as giving holidaymakers helpful advice and tips on choosing the perfect holiday accommodation in Cape Town and the Western Cape. We’ll be offering the wisdom of over 20 years experience in the industry [we were the early adopters of the new web era!] and posting regular tips and hints on how owners can increase their bookings, streamline their business and fill those empty bednights. We’ll also post some random thoughts, brain dumps and the occasional rant. Read more