With City Sightseeing set for a summer relaunch of the Hop-on-Hop-off route in the Cape Town CBD – suspended since the pandemic – we speak to the man whose red buses pump tourists through Cape Town’s veins.
Richard Branson launched a mail order record business at the age of 20 and went on to found Virgin. Sean Summers stacked Pick ‘n Pay trolleys as a schoolboy and became the company’s CEO – twice. And Claus Tworeck started cleaning tourist buses at the age of 16 and today owns City Sightseeing South Africa, whose red buses are as much part of Cape Town as Table Mountain and Tweede Nuwe Jaar.
With about 60 buses in Cape Town and Johannesburg, four boats and up to 250 staff during the peak season, it’s a complex and sometimes stressful business. But as Tworeck says, “I love buses, I love tourism, and I’m having fun. Most people go to work because they have to. I go because I enjoy being there.”
His passion for buses was ignited at the age of 16 when he needed a part-time job to pay for his first motorbike. “Janis Ross – who was the ‘engine room’ of the Hylton and Janis duo that owned Hylton Ross Tours – took a liking to me and I ended up cleaning buses for the company on weekends and during the week in the afternoons,” says Tworeck.
Before long, the mechanic who looked after the buses agreed to give him a “mini apprenticeship”, and when Tworeck graduated with an engineering degree in the late 1980s, Ross asked him to insource the company’s maintenance and open a workshop.
Soon he was managing all the company’s operations. And when the Ross family decided to sell in 2002, he partnered with another mentor, David Munton – who had pioneered open-top bus tours in Cape Town years earlier using lovingly restored vintage vehicles – to acquire the business. Two of the original vintage buses survived and they were incorporated into the fleet, operating Cape Town’s first open-top tours.
Five years later, the Tollman family’s Cullinan Holdings “decided they really wanted to have Hylton Ross Tours, and they eventually made me an offer that I accepted”, says Tworeck.
A GLOBAL BRAND
With a focus on the open-top buses, Tworeck and Munton rebranded the business to the global City Sightseeing brand. Seventeen years later, the business runs a fleet of Hop-on-Hop-off buses on two routes (red and blue), Xplorer day tours to attractions such as Cape Point and the Winelands, and boat cruises at the V&A Waterfront. In 2013, it expanded to Johannesburg, where it has Hop-on-Hop-off buses and tours of Soweto.
Tworeck is quick to emphasise that building the company has been a team effort. “We have a unique team with talent in every direction. That comes with really differentiated personalities, and the exciting bit is to keep them all working together. It offers such a diverse range of views and opinions that you always tend to end up doing the right thing,” he says.
The 58-year-old CEO runs the “engine room” alongside a tight-knit leadership team that includes his wife, Wendy Volkel, as finance director; Paul Nel as head of operations; and David Henwood as head of marketing. And while he’s built and led two successful businesses, he’s quick to credit the strength of his team and insists he doesn’t see himself as a genius.
“In tourism, what you need to be is diligent and hardworking,” he says. “Tourism runs seven days a week, 24 hours a day. It never stops.” City Sightseeing is no different. Its buses are on the road throughout the day and maintenance happens at night.
“If a bus gets a dent on Saturday afternoon, it needs to be fixed by Sunday morning,” says Tworeck. “That takes quite a committed team of people, from panel-beating and spray-painting to air-conditioning and mechanical repairs. And we have a big team of cleaners.”
The company’s Paarden Eiland office has about 30 staff, and although Tworeck says they share an open-plan space and “anyone can come up and talk to me at any time”, he isn’t always at his desk. “When the workshop has a technical issue, I still sometimes like to play ‘bus-bus’ and get in the pit under the bus to have a look myself,” he says. “I value these moments, actually.”
A DAY IN THE LIFE
The CEO’s day starts with a ride on his e-bike from Camps Bay to City Sightseeing’s sales office and coffee shop in Long Street. “I chat to the sales staff, then I go down to the V&A [Waterfront’s] sales office and do the same thing there. Time permitting, I’ll go past the boats and chat to the skippers and crew.” Then it’s back into the saddle for a ride to Paarden Eiland.
Tworeck’s easy-going chatter often extends to tourists waiting to board the buses. Whether they’re local (half of them are South African) or visiting from abroad, he says they all have one thing in common: “Most businesses provide something people need. We offer something people want. When they come to us, they’re already in a good mood – on holiday or enjoying a weekend off – and we get to be part of making that happy moment even better.”
The red buses’ glowing Tripadvisor and Google reviews often attract attention from other operators in City Sightseeing group’s global network of more than 100 cities, and many come to Cape Town to decode Tworeck’s secret sauce. “They ask us, ‘How do you get your staff to be so friendly?’” he says. “And I tell them it’s simple – South Africans are, by nature, warm and friendly people. Yes, we have our share of challenges, but we get on with it.”
SECRETS OF A SUCCESS STORY
Another ingredient is consistency. “To run an open-top bus business you need four simple things: the right bus at the right bus stop at the right time with the right crew.”
Then there’s technology. “We are quite advanced. Buying a ticket online, getting a QR code on your phone and scanning to redeem a ticket is something that’s only been rolled out in Europe in the last year or two. We’ve had that since around 2009. In the coming season we want you to be able to have your ticket in your Apple wallet and tap your phone on a terminal to activate it.”
Another summer highlight will be the return of City Sightseeing’s yellow Hop-on-Hop-off route in the Cape Town CBD – suspended since the pandemic in 2020 – albeit in a different form which is still under wraps.
“The CBD is incredibly important for tourism in Cape Town,” says Tworeck. “There’s been a perception among visitors that it has become unsafe, but we are fortunate in that the Cape Town Central City Improvement District (CCID), which provides security in town around the clock in the form of Public Safety Officers and a 24-hour control centre, works tirelessly and effectively to dispel that myth. We reinforce its efforts in our messaging on the bus and by running walking tours. People want to tick off their wish lists, which include Greenmarket Square, the Bo-Kaap, the Castle, so we all have a responsibility to make sure these places remain accessible, clean and safe.”
CCID CEO Tasso Evangelinos has high praise for the City Sightseeing operation and the spin-offs for the city centre economy. "This service, which runs like clockwork, ensures that tourists and Capetonians come into the CBD and experience its unique offering, providing a huge boost to businesses and cultural centres throughout the year. This is invaluable," says Evangelinos.
After 23 years of operating open-top buses, Tworeck is clearly still energetic, positive and enthusiastic about the business. He insists on continuous innovation improvement, which means substantial investment in buses – “they are imported and cost a lot more than most people think” – technology and state-of-the-art ticketing systems. “We also try to be environmentally conscious and are investigating electric buses and boats,” says Tworeck.
City Sightseeing shares its success by supporting iKhaya le Themba, an after-school play and educare centre for vulnerable children in Imizamo Yethu, Hout Bay. “The company and many of our passengers have over the years contributed by building classrooms and supporting staff and volunteers who care for the children, making this one of the most rewarding results of our years in business,” says Tworeck.
The company’s Red Angels project helps staff manage challenges such as debts and the cost of school fees and uniforms. “We can’t always help, but where we can, we do,” he says.
And what clearly delights him, 42 years after Janis Ross unwittingly changed the course of his life by employing him to clean buses, is that at the age of 80, she remains an active member of the City Sightseeing team. “She keeps herself busy with as much or as little as she wants to do,” says Tworeck. “She looks after the workshop crew and the cleaning crew and makes sure that they are always well fed and well clothed.”
IMAGES: City Sightseeing South Africa, CCID
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