The City of Cape Town is preparing for the largest-ever festive tourism safety operation, with record-breaking visitor numbers on the cards. About 4 000 enforcement and emergency personnel will be deployed across the tourist attractions in the City of Cape Town. It will include a special deployment of Tourism Unit personnel to Table Mountain National Park and the City Bowl. To ensure visitors’ safety in Cape Town during the festive season about 4 000 enforcement and emergency personnel will be deployed across the tourist attractions in the City of Cape Town. This was announced during the City’s festive season safety plan launch at the Table Mountain Cable Way Kloofnek parking area on Wednesday 8 November. The operation is in conjunction with the South African Police Services (SAPS), SANParks, Central Improvement Districts and neighbourhood watches. It is the largest-ever festive tourism safety operation, with record-breaking visitor numbers on the cards. It will include a special deployment of Tourism Unit personnel to Table Mountain National Park and the City Bowl. Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis says technology, including drones, dashcams, automatic number plate recognition, and CCTV, will be a key feature. He says the escalation in crime on the Table Mountain National Parks and elsewhere in the city is “directly linked to the early release of 15 000 parolees” under the special release programme a few months ago. JP Smith, Mayco member for safety and security, says 80 Metro Police Training College graduates will start their in-service training in the tourism hotspots. “Operations will be even larger this year, and the expanded tourism unit is but the latest example of identifying and addressing a need, in partnership with other agencies, to improve public safety,” he says. Megan Taplin, Park Manager for Table Mountain National Park (TMNP), says their biggest challenge is the need to deploy resources to cover about 25 000 hectares from Signal Hill to Cape Point. “One of the unique features of Table Mountain is that it’s an open-access park because we want to make it accessible to everyone to enjoy and benefit from. But that also means that criminals can access the park from different areas and there are a lot of escape routes for them. She adds: “We have special operation teams and rangers and we do deploy them to hotspot areas. It is important for us to work with our partners. We can’t tackle this problem alone.” Copyright www.news24.com

There is likely an automation tool for almost any task that you are performing for your SEO strategy. That doesn’t mean, though, that you should set your SEO strategy to autopilot and remove the human touch entirely. The below SEO tasks are those that you should still delegate to humans because they are essential to achieving top-ranking results in Google. High-quality content writing Google recently made it clear that the use of AI-generated content is not against their policies. Their focus is on the quality of the content, not on the way that it was produced. So using content generation tools during your content writing process is certainly a great strategy. But although these tools are impressive, the content quality is still limited. Purely publishing auto-generated content without bringing in the human touch to the process is unlikely to produce the type of high-quality content that it takes to rank in top positions. High-quality content needs to embody Google’s E-EAT philosophy, meaning it includes experience, expertise, authority, and trust. Remember, ChatGPT was trained on data from 2021 and above, meaning it isn’t really capable of bringing something “new” to the conversation. Google wants to rank content from websites that are thought leaders in their industries–that means bringing original ideas and strategies to the conversation. This is even more reason to look at these text automation tools as a starting point for content writing, not a substitute. High-level SEO strategy Succeeding in organic search also requires understanding what type of content is already ranking on the first page of Google. Factors like relevance, search intent, word count, featured snippets, People Also Ask, and more can all impact whether your content has more or less ranking potential. Some marketing tools make it easier to find all of the information you need to make strategic decisions, but a human eye is still needed to make decisions that are the best for your business and your unique goals. You don’t want to be investing time and resources into content creation for keywords that are out of reach or creating the wrong type of content that doesn’t provide users with what they are actually looking for. Understanding key SEO metrics like Domain Authority, Domain Rating, Keyword Difficulty, and search intent is still an absolute must for those executing your SEO efforts. Having a fundamental understanding of these important SEO factors will help you understand how to leverage these tools to their fullest potential. Do SEO automation the right way SEO automation is truly the way of the present and future. If you want to succeed in organic search, it’s important that you start familiarizing yourself with the many ways automation can be integrated into your current marketing strategy. Getting comfortable with these tools may have a little bit of a learning curve, but it will be well worth the effort for the benefits it brings to your organic performance and your bottom line. Copyright: www.wordstream.com

  Some hotel trends create ripples in the industry, others tidal waves. But no matter how large or small the impact of a trend is, nor how fleeting or lasting it turns out to be, the hotels that benefit from it the most are those that adapt their guest experience to it the fastest. This is something independent hotels, being agile, creative, and free of the inflexible standards characteristic of large chains, are in the best position to accomplish. Here’s a look at five hospitality trends that are changing the guest experience: some perhaps for good, all certainly for the better. The seamless guest experience Though not the most attention-grabbing of today’s hotel trends, this is one that keeps popping up in industry news because of how fundamentally important it is. While the guest experience may indeed be divided into distinct stages — search, book, and stay being the big three — if it feels broken to travelers, it’s going to lead to booking opportunities lost and guest expectations unmet. Any significant change in the look, feel, and ease of the booking stage compared to the search stage creates a friction in the guest experience that causes travelers to abort rather than book. In the same vein, if it’s a breeze to book a room online but check-in turns out to be a lengthy process of filling out forms by hand, it sets guests up for frustration and disappointment. Hotels are implementing technology to automate and streamline the entire guest experience from start to finish, from full and attractive hotel profiles to optimized booking engines to one-click check-in. Hoteliers are taking ownership of every single stage of the customer journey and, in so doing, are creating the seamless guest experience travelers not only appreciate but have come to expect. The personalized guest experience The industry is entering a golden age of personalization in response to evolving consumer expectations. The individual guest has embraced their own uniqueness; the hotel industry must embrace it as well, in all its unique-as-a-snowflake splendor. Hotel technology providers are investing in solutions that will make the entire guest experience tailored 100% to the individual: from their ideal hotel criteria to their food and music preferences. Hotels are responding to this trend by focusing on making sure their guests feel unique, not just entries in a booking ledger. By recognizing and catering to their preferences and fancies throughout the customer journey, hotels are curating not just one guest experience but as many as there are people who check in. The transformational-travel guest experience This hotel trend is one that reflects a new philosophy of travel in which travelers behind are seeking self-reflection and development in their travels, to connect with humanity and the natural kingdom, and to return home changed, with shifted perspectives and a deeper understanding of the world they inhabit. Hotels are supporting them in this mission. They’re designing guest experiences that enable travelers to challenge themselves and to engage with the local community and in conservation efforts. This can mean anything from offering an off-the-grid meditation retreat to facilitating volunteer work with non-profit organizations. These guest experiences are the antidotes to mindless indulgences and the mindset that the value of a hotel stay lies in the Instagram posts generated from it. The food-focused guest experience Nobody would ever call excellent food a “trend.” “A divine element of the human experience,” sure. What is a trend, however, is that travelers are choosing hotels exclusively for their food and food-focused guest experiences. Hotels are rising—like soft, pillowy dinner rolls in the oven—to the occasion, with decadent in-room-dining, cooking classes in the hotel restaurant, and organic ingredients sourced from local farms (or even harvested on site). Breakfast buffets have become so exquisite they defy the term “buffet” and answer instead to “sumptuous feast.” Bon appétit! The eco-friendly guest experience Travelers are more aware of their carbon footprint than ever, and they’re looking to minimize it wherever and however they can — starting with booking rooms at hotels with the same values. The hotels that embrace these values and adapt the guest experience to them not only welcome more travelers, but they also cut down on energy waste and save money. From actions immediately visible to guests (think responsibly sourced toiletries, lights and air-conditioning that switch off when the room is vacant, and a towel-reuse policy) to efforts taking place behind the scenes (going paperless with a cloud-based PMS), hotels are jumping on the bandwagon for sustainable hospitality. Each of these guest experiences is indicative of changes in the industry, some of which may turn out to be more impactful and long-lasting than others. Some things, however, will remain constant: Hotels must always be open to change, whether it comes in the form of new technology or new attitudes about travel. But, of course, good hospitality never goes out of style.