How luxury lodges for locals could keep tourism wolf from the door

The tourism industry has been hit particularly hard by the Covid-19 lockdown. The Tourism Business Council of South Africa estimates that the industry is losing R748 million a day and that many jobs will be permanently lost. With South Africa’s borders closed, no foreign tourists  – the mainstay of many private game lodges – are not allowed into the country. Amid this crisis, a new super luxury game lodge has been launched by businessman Japie van Niekerk. Cheetah Plains is aimed at the super-rich and offers absolute privacy. Van Niekerk told Linda van Tilburg about the eco-credentials of his new venture which includes quiet vehicles powered by Tesla batteries. In the absence of foreign travellers, he is opening his lodge to locals at reduced rates to ‘keep the wolf from the door’. Van Niekerk says he can see a thin silver lining on the Covid-19 cloud. 

The decision was made three years ago to build the place and it was new concept. When you say lodge, is not really a lodge like in the traditional lodge where you have a dining room and eight rooms, where you we have joint facilities. It’s a different kind of concept. We weren’t brave because, who in the world could foresee three years ago that we are going to have an international lockdown, an international pandemic. This caught the whole world by surprise. It’s not something that anyone could have foreseen, even a month before we heard about it the first time. It’s affecting tourism all over the world. International borders are closed, up to very recently provincial borders were closed. Our market is an international market, we’re not really a South African market. Although currently, we are marketing for South Africans at discounted rates just to get some expenses paid and to try to keep as many jobs as possible open at Cheetah Plains and in the industry.

How badly are you affected by the Covid-19 lockdown?

In the worst possible way. We have zero business… 100% of our business is the up-market, international tourism market. Cheetah Plains and the big names in the business, Londolozi, Singita, Mala Mala and Lion Sands, we have all basically mothballed our businesses. We can’t trade and there is no international travel.

And how do you survive? Did you keep all the people who were working for you?

We’ve got wonderful staff. We obviously had to break the news to them that we won’t be able to pay full salaries and try to keep as many jobs as we can, cut our expenses to the absolute minimum. For months now, I’ve been feeding Cheetah Plains from my other sources of income, which fortunately I do have. A lot of my colleagues or businesses in the industry, they only have tourism as their income and they are battling and it’s very, very hard. Banks are breathing down your neck, we can’t pay the bills and there is just zero income. When you have zero income and you have fixed expenses, what do you do?

I’ve looked at your website and normally you would advertise your houses at R118 000 a night for four people. That is a super-luxury market. What are the people in that market doing at the moment?

Staying home, I suppose, but there is light at the end of the tunnel, we are well booked for next year, which is fantastic. I think everyone in our market wants to come to the bush as soon as possible. They are sitting at home, whether it’s in America, Europe, the Middle East or the East. There are lockdowns everywhere to some extent. The feedback that we get from the travel industry is that our clients are desperate to get to the bush and they can’t wait for the borders to open.

Cheetah Plains

So, is there a bit of a silver lining at the moment for some South Africans? You said you lowered your rates for local people.

We have some uptake, not a lot. That just keeps the wolf from the door.  The silver lining for South African travellers is that if I am a South African, I would use this opportunity to come and visit these super luxurious places, which the average South Africans normally cannot afford.

Is there the possibility of asking the government for corridors to fly overseas tourists straight to areas like the Kruger National Park?

I’m not aware of any concerted effort or joint effort that’s been made to ask the government for that. However, I have very wealthy friends from Russia that wanted to come. They own private jet planes that can fly straight into Kruger International from Moscow and they’re all well-connected.

I gave them the Civil Aviation Authorities’ application contact person. They were blocked everywhere, they said, under no circumstances will they allow any tourism travel into South Africa at all. So, no, it’s been handled very badly by the South African government. I think their decision is a blanket decision. I think that if they start applying their minds, they can really allow limited international travel in a very safe way.

Our market that we serve, is usually the family who fly in with their own private jet. They will fly to Kruger International and then we will pick them a smaller aeroplane or helicopter and we will take them to Cheetah Plains. They still have to go through customs and immigration, but with social distancing, there will be limited contact and we will have the correct protocols.

Wash your hands, sanitise, socially distance, all that can be done and we can easily put those things in place to prevent the spreading of coronavirus. We will recommend to our clients to do a corona test three days before they depart and to have that test with them. That’s what we do with our staff on a very regular basis. We all go for tests regularly to make sure no one’s got the virus.

Why should we make special provisions for a class of people, of super-rich people, when that cannot apply to other people?

Wealthy people spend a lot of money and a lot of money goes to a lot of people to put bread on the table. They can travel safely. I’m not talking about loading an EasyJet, super low-cost jet and flying 400 people into South Africa which you can’t control. I’m talking about very exclusive private tourists that can come in and the necessary precautions will be taken before they depart in terms of Covid-19 tests.  Those protocols can be put in place, it’s not a problem and I don’t really see any risk in it. It’s important that money gets into our country and the tourism industry has come to a complete standstill and one of our biggest job creators in the country is tourism. The future of this country is tourism.

For South Africans that might want to book, can you give us an idea what they would find at Cheetah Plains?

Cheetah Plains is a new concept that we’ve introduced in the market. We have three exclusive villas in the bush. Every house has four bedrooms. The three houses don’t mix with each other. It’s completely private and they operate autonomously. Every house has its own butler, its own masseuse, its own chef, its own game ranger, its own game range vehicle, its own staff, its own sommelier, etc. So, there’s no cross-pollination between the houses.

It is like having your own super-luxury lodge in the bush exclusively just for yourself. You won’t find another couple in the room next door. You won’t find another couple having breakfast or sharing a game drive with you. You won’t find another couple having lunch or dinner with you.

It is yours, the whole house, the whole lodge is yours for that period of stay and that makes it exclusive. It’s completely private. We have a policy at Cheetah Plains that no names, no Instagram photos, no Facebook, no social media will ever be posted about the guests. That’s how I like to have my holidays, in privacy with my friends or my family without sharing a table or game drives, for that matter, or any other facility with someone strange that I don’t know. It’s quality time that you spend in the bush in super-luxury.

It sounds like lockdown in the bush. Japie, your vehicles apparently are eco-friendly and you included a bit of Elon Musk technology into them, batteries by Tesla? 

One of my pet hates is that when I am on a game drive and you stop at a sighting, you switch the car off and then you want to move a metre forward to get a better view of a lion kill or a leopard kill, then you need to start the vehicle again. It upsets everything in nature, the starter motor. It is very intrusive and very irritating.

We’ve got exceptionally good engineers, mechanical engineers in this country and I’m lucky enough to know a few. I went to the one guy and said I want you to build me a vehicle that looks like a Land Cruiser, it must drive like a Range Rover and it must work like a golf cart. A few months later, we started testing the first one, and they were almost flawless with very few niggles. And a year later, they are running like a Rolex watch. Unbelievable.

Another thing that I don’t like is to get cold. There’s no reason to get cold on the game drive vehicle. So, we’ve added a heated seat. So early morning when you get in your vehicle, it is warm already and when you come back later in the evening, you sit with a very comfortable, warm bum and a back. This gives you an exceptional quality experience. With most of these vehicles, when you are on a game drive, your back is sore.  Not with us, because of the heated seat, your muscles are still relaxed. It is just an unbelievable, luxurious experience.

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