It can be a surprise to safari novices that the most terrifying charge they witness does not come courtesy of our four-legged friends, but of the person who presents the bill.
Wilderness is certainly not averse to charging like a particularly musthy Loxodonta africana, but the punters are queuing to pick up the big tabs because of the astonishing quality of the experiences Wilderness offers, and the company matched its best-ever occupancy rate in the interim period.
Wilderness attributed its success to a strong US market — 46% of its revenue. This was boosted by the dollar’s appreciation.
Its Mombo camp in the Okavango reopened after a rebuild, while political stability in Kenya put that destination back on the shopping list. There may also be a sense that despite global political and economic risks, the climate remains benign for the older, richer tourists who are Wilderness’s target market.
As well as operating camps, Wilderness aims to own the client by offering a vertically integrated business model including transport services, marketing, sales and reservations. This helps to create a complete guest experience, and its professionally run aircraft operation offers reassurance in an environment like Maun, where some pilots have been known to measure their bottle-to-throttle limits in minutes rather than hours.
Wilderness’s operations revolve around a strong conservation and community involvement ethic, and its new lodges in Rwanda will add mountain gorillas and the truly peculiar shoebill to its fans’ must-see list.
The betting man wouldn’t often have lost money over the years if he’d backed SAA to win the Cash-Guzzling Zombie Apocalypse Handicap, but all of a sudden plucky old Denel has popped up on the rails with a run that suggests it could give the national carrier a challenge. With the foul whiff of corruption assaulting the nostrils, Denel has plunged to a loss of R1.7bn that may not match SAA’s more spectacular years but certainly suggests the company has promise.
The entities that came together to form Denel were born from the undeniable strategic requirements of the apartheid government, which had a whole lot of fighting it wanted to do. But, due to its pariah status, it could not buy the kit it needed, so it had to make its own. Clearly this rationale no longer exists, and the arms deal demonstrated quite how happy the global players are to entertain anybody with a fat taxpayer-funded cheque book. Denel describes itself as a national strategic asset, but on current form it’s hard not to think that somebody’s got their assets and liabilities mixed up.
The company admits to some R500m of irregular expenditure, and the disclaimer audit opinion from the auditor-general should set the alarm bells ringing. A new board has been appointed with a mandate to root out corruption and strengthen governance, as well as restoring the financial position from its current liquidity challenges. None of this shambles is likely to get the customers beating down the door, and things had better improve at speed if the company’s going to have a future.
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