Rovos Rail founder Rohan Vos remembers clearly the moment he landed on the idea for the steam train passenger service. He’d wanted to take his family around the country at the back of a Spoornet train, but had been quoted an astronomical figure for the pleasure. Not about to drop the price, the railway suggested he sell tickets for the experience to make it more affordable.
Soon after, on a wintry evening 35 years ago, Vos was submerged in a hot bath “with my Red Heart rum and Coke close at hand”.
“There’d been a power cut, so I was musing by candlelight about the consequences of turning a hobby into a business; I let my imagination float around in delusions of grandeur,” he tells the FM.
An entrepreneur who’d run an auto-spares business and shopping centres, Vos, then 40, had little experience in the sector other than a growing interest in the Steam Preservation Society and a fascination with trains. So this was an “uncharted course”, he says.
“I had little idea where to start, let alone where to aim. However, a unique challenge was right up my street and the decision was made to go ahead. This was — unknown to me at the time — a life-changing moment.”
It was a decision that would pay off; today Rovos Rail provides a top-tier service that runs 11 journeys through 10 African countries and has a 500-strong staff.
Still, it was never going to be plain sailing — particularly with South Africa sidelined by the international community because of apartheid; it was seen more as a pariah nation than a tourist destination.
Says Rovos COO Tiffany Vos-Thane, the youngest daughter of Vos and his wife, Anthea: “I think it was a big gamble and thankfully in 1993 [Vos] concocted a plan to run between Cape Town and Victoria Falls, and he managed to convince a British agent to take it on board and sell it — and it sold.”
It was in the nick of time: the bank was about to foreclose on their home. “To my mom’s horror, all the money he had made was gone and they had four kids. Once those tickets were sold from Cape Town to Vic Falls, the rest is history,” she says.
The company grew quickly, and Vos soon bought 30 coaches to expand his seven-coach fleet. “Every year, pretty much, the business grew, and South Africa’s popularity started to grow. So he started to introduce new journeys. That’s always been his principle — to come up with new itineraries whenever we can so that we can offer the market something new,” says Vos-Thane.
She finds it interesting how her mom and dad, who had not worked in the hospitality industry, could come up with a tourism product that is so beautiful. But “they understand — my dad in particular — he understands people very well. He understood that if he were to create a product, he knew ‘Let me think about what I would like, not what everybody else is doing’.
“He absolutely knew that’s what he wanted to do. Though he had never worked in hospitality, he worked from a place of what he would want. Being such a hard worker, that just rippled through the company, from everything from food to beverage to service to housekeeping.”
‘Clickety-clack’
Is there anything similar in the country? The historic Blue Train has been operating since the 1940s, but that goes only between Cape Town and Pretoria, and it’s known more for modern luxury and contemporary elegance, whereas Rovos is Edwardian in look and feel.
“We don’t typically compete because they’re a bit more of a modern experience. Their entire train is connected, they have air conditioning throughout, they have a more modern feel throughout whereas ours are restored, vintage and it’s not just one body,” says Vos-Thane. “For us it’s much more that clickety-clack, clickety-clack; it is much more of that vintage experience.”
Those “clickety-clack” journeys are no short hauls. The trips range from two nights between Pretoria and Durban to 16 nights between Cape Town and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. A trip per person sharing between Pretoria and Durban is R50,000 apiece, and most opt for the deluxe suites, because of the comfort and space they offer. “What is most important to us is that our guests be comfortable and have the privacy they need and want.”
The most popular short route (two to five nights) is the weekly Pretoria-Vic Falls journey, which has had a surge of interest because of more connecting flights, improving accessibility. The Dar es Salaam route is the most popular long journey. “We only run that trip about six times a year and some of those are even private charters now by big customers in Europe or other places that have actually chartered the whole train and then sell it to their clients or guests,” says Vos-Thane.
The vast majority — about 90% — of those clients come from abroad, with the biggest market being the US, followed by the UK. The Dutch are also fans of the trains, and there’s been an uptick from the Scandinavian countries. For many, the trip is a bucket-list item. But Vos-Thane says the pandemic also fostered a greater sense of urgency; people don’t want to wait until they are 60 or 70 to get to Africa.
“I think social media has really helped with the perception of South Africa and Africa because more and more people have come here, giving more people confidence. I think this desire to disconnect while connecting with loved ones is really big now. And we’re just benefiting because we’ve always been about that.”
In a world where everyone is always connected, unplugging can be a big drawcard. “We don’t allow electronic devices to be used in public areas on our trains, so we don’t have Wi-Fi on board,” says Vos-Thane. “We’ve had this active disconnecting for 35 years. Everybody in the world is seeing the appeal of that.”
While they may reconsider the matter at some point, for now they’re determined to keep the train as is. “We know what Wi-Fi does to people. Everybody will suddenly be stuck in their suites watching the latest Bridgerton or Formula One and they won’t be doing what they’re supposed to be doing on the train.”
In the blood
Unlike her father, Vos-Thane comes from a hospitality background. She always knew this was what she wanted to do, and she went to hotel school right out of school. “Growing up in the train I spoke to guests, it’s what I did all the time, it’s what I loved. It was just in my blood,” she says.
After working in hotels from the age of about 18 to 30, she decided to come home and join her parents’ business. She’s been with the company for 6½ years. And while five of them have been spent as COO, she started in project management, where she was charged with figuring out problem areas and bottlenecks. In her first two years she overhauled the entire food and beverage system, put in place a new financial system and implemented a new reservations system. “My goal for the future is to get us to a place where our bookings are online because at the moment you can only book through our reservations department,” she says.
There are also plans to double the locomotive department, and there is a focus on sustainability and training, as well as community projects. “We are organically helping so many communities through the trips we run but I know we can take that a whole step further,” she says. To that end, Rovos is working with consultants to improve diesel consumption and reduce water wastage. “We’ve been doing so much as a business already, but I know there’s so much we could do that we haven’t even thought of yet.”
Also on the cards is rebuilding the business after the knock of Covid. In 2019, Rovos had close to 15,000 guests; last year it was about 10,000. “We would like to build up to pre-pandemic levels not by adding any more trips, just by getting better occupancy across our journeys. That’s our real focus,” says Vos-Thane. “I think a lot about what the pandemic taught us: less is more; focus on quality not quantity.”
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