The SA tourism industry is revelling in the limelight cast by one of the globe’s favourite music videos – shot in the Cape and now viewed more than 52 million times.
SA Tourism has been lavished with high praise for facilitating the production of super-band Coldplay’s Paradise video, which the band’s team shot in Cape Town, the Boland and the Karoo.
The band performed in Joburg and Cape Town in October and at short notice decided to capture the imagery for their hit Paradise in the paradise they discovered in Africa.
The music video tells the story of a lonely elephant in a London zoo which longs for companionship.
The jumbo escapes, heads south and finally reaches its fellow-African wildlife in the Karoo – its “paradise”.
Tourism blogger and tourism business owner Chris von Ulmenstein saluted SA Tourism: “The title of the song could not have been better chosen to reflect our beautiful country and city, and its popularity as a song, and as a fun and funky beautifully shot music video, has a tremendous tourism benefit for South Africa generally, and the Cape specifically, not costing the tourism authorities a cent.
“The song has just started 2012 as the number one single on the UK hit charts, to the band’s own surprise in their Tweets.”
As of today, the video had been watched more than 52 million times on YouTube.
Another on-line commentator wrote that the video was “a gift that’s literally fallen into South Africa’s lap”.
“It’s a level of global popularity that South African Tourism wants to capitalise on to drive awareness of the paradise-like beauty of this destination and to encourage more people to take Coldplay’s South African inspiration and turn it into a holiday in the most beautiful destination in the world.”