Lights out on your reputation
by Heidi Edelmuller
As a regular contributor to the TripAdvisor travel forum, I wasn’t surprised today to see one British poster asking if it was true that Cape Town is experiencing regular and on-going electricity cuts. He said that he had read an article in the Independent Newspaper about how tourists trapped in the Table Mountain Arial Cableway had to be rescued after a power cut.
The Independent article is rather frightening for any would-be Table Mountain tourist. I certainly would think twice about getting in the cable car after reading: “The 40 passengers in the lower car were forced to abseil four meters to safety through the floor. The 50 in the upper car were evacuated through the roof.”
I’m sure that many of the 800,000 tourists expected to use the Cableway this year will be visiting the Table Mountain Arial Cableway site to find out how the Cableway is addressing the power cuts. Sadly the last item in the “news” section of the site is from December and there is no mention of emergency rescues or plans to prevent such incidents in the future.
Now I know this isn’t really an online brand attack. After all, it’s not their fault that the power was cut and that it will probably be cut again. But it is their duty to acknowledge the issue – and show that the issue is being addressed. I’m sure their PR department is very busy at the mo, but why have they missed something as simple and obvious as putting their response online?
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Heidi, good point. The answer is simple though, they don't know how important it is. No one has educated them on the value (and pitfalls) of online.
We have a massive job still to do to educate businesses in South Africa about the importance of online and might just take a while still to get there.
Posted by Henre on 2008/01/23