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

There’s some confusion surrounding the ticket allocation and collection for the forthcoming 2010 World Cup in South Africa. There are two types of tickets. Individual match tickets for each of the 64 games and Team Specific Match Tickets (TSTs) which are a series of tickets to follow your national team and may include between 3 and 7 tickets. (Code TST5 = 5 games etc). If your team gets knocked out your TST ticket remains valid to follow the team that progresses into the next round of the competition.

You can only collect your tickets from the designated Ticket Collection Points in each of the 9 host cities in South Africa. You must be the person who applied for the tickets and must present the credit card used to pay for the tickets. You will also need another from of ID such as your passport. Tickets will not be delivered to your home address.

Tickets are still available for the tournament and yesterday Fifa announced another PMA (participating member association) phase of sales which will take place through the Fifa.com website from 9 Feb - 7 April, 2010. This will coincide with the 4th planned sales phase whereby match tickets will be available on Fifa.com and at branches of FNB Bank (in South Africa) on a first come first served basis.

Sales of World Cup tickets in the host country have so far been met with apathy. More tickets have been sold to watch England’s games than Bafana Bafana, the South African national team. This is no great surprise in a country where Man Utd and Liverpool are the two biggest supported teams. Having lived in South Africa for some time I wouldn’t be overly concerned by the lack of enthusiasm thus far. South Africans are notoriously laid back about committing to any event until the day before it’s due to take place. For more information about tickets for the World Cup visit Fifa.com.

I’ve been feeling a bit down of late. The seemingly constant negative reporting from overseas (particularly the UK) about increasing crime in South Africa and the impending recession (the first in South Africa for nearly 17 years). And this week we’ve had the debacle of the SA Elections with all it’s finger pointing and inevitable uncertainty for this beautiful country. However, this morning, I stumbled across an article by Graham Boynton of the Daily Telegraph in London who restored my faith in this beautiful country and the reasons why I chose it as my home. Read the article in full here and then print and stick this last paragraph next to your holiday rental calendar.

‘Over the next 12 to 18 months, British travellers are going to swarm through the Cape in the wake of rugby, cricket and football tours and, given the beauty of the place and the relative price advantages, it’s hard to see South Africa anything but full up for 2009 and 2010. So the time to book is now’.

Are you fully booked? If not, then you’re probably missing out already. Add your Cape Town and Western Cape Holiday Accommodation to onelocation.com now, there really is no time to lose.

Here’s a few facts and figures from Fifa.com regarding the first phase of ticket sales for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

• 1,862,319 tickets requested from 205 countries
• 555,871 tickets allocated to lucky winners in first ballot phase
• 245,948 tickets allocated to South African citizens (44%)
• Other top countries allocated were: USA 69,208, UK 39,421, Germany 29,330
• Most popular team was England with 228,822 team-follow requests (ie tickets for all England games) with only 8,895 tickets available.
• Most popular match category was 4.
• Most over-subscribed match was the final by a factor of 3,000%
• Number of oversubscribed matches was 52

For those lucky enough to receive tickets in the first phase they will be notified by the end of this month (April). They originally said 3 days but I guess even their mailing system is struggling with demand. Would be good to hear from anybody who has received tickets already, I’m still waiting for mine!

Tickets from the first phase ballot will be drawn from the FIFA hat today. All successful applicants will recieve notification within 3 working days by email. If you’re not one of the lucky people this time you can always apply in the second phase of ticketing starting on May 4th, 2009. However, unlike the first phase, the second phase will be on a first come first served basis so you’d better have quick fingers and your credit card at the ready on the stroke of midnight to stand a chance of getting the tickets you’re after. There’s also a 3rd, 4th and 5th phase of ticket sales with the latter being conducted at the point of sale. This will only happen with any remaining seat still unsold after the first 4 phases so more than likely it’ll be the expensive tickets for the ‘not so great’ games!. You can read more on the Fifa.com website. AND remember to add your property to onelocation if you haven’t already. There’s a few more free places left and in about 3 days thousands of lucky ticket winners will start scouring South Africa for World Cup Accommodation.