FEATURE SOUTH AFRICA
have plenty to offer visitors prepared
to stay in town for a while. An activity near the top of most visitors’ lists is viewing the famed big five in some of the African continent’s most spectacular game parks. Kruger National Park is the best known, but luxury private lodges and reserves are a better recommendation for those visitors looking forward to the ultimate in privacy and tampering. Makanyane Safari Lodge in Madikwe Private Game Reserve in the malaria-free north west region of the country is looking forward to a surge in visitors after recently hosting Michelle
GALLERY »
sellinglonghaul.com/gallery Did you see our supplement detailing
10 agents' accounts of one of their fam trips to South Africa's North West Province? To learn all about this great destination read all about it at:
sellinglonghaul 16 September 2011 •
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Obama and her daughters for a safari. The UK has long been a core market for the South African tourism industry and there are plenty of ‘new’ reasons to resell the country to clients who have not visited in several years, says Matthew Armstrong, trade relations manager UK for South African Tourism. “The major legacy from South Africa’s
highly successful staging of the 2010 Football World Cup is a dramatic improvement in our tourism infrastructure, from lavishly upgraded airports and a number of exciting new hotels and lodges to a vastly improved service culture. “This year we have nothing on the
global scale of the World Cup or the Lions tour but there’s an ever-growing programme of top-class events, including the Cape Town Jazz Festival, the Telegraph Hay Literary Festival, the Argus cycle tour and the Comrades Marathon, to provide focal points.” Many tour operators say business is
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slower than expected following last year’s World Cup exposure, but Hayes and Jarvis has a different take on things. Says product manager Andrea Loddo:
”There‘s a definite upturn of demand, so we have re-launched our Grand Tour of South Africa and Garden Route Highlights self-drives and Cape Whales and Winelands escorted tours as well as adding Cape Town’s historic Mount Nelson and the city’s great value Southern Sun, on V&A waterfront, to our hotel offer. A four-night break at the later is priced from £1,095 pp, including car hire and Heathrow flights.” Following last year’s rush of new
property openings to cope with World Cup demand, the country is now, if anything, a little over-stocked with bed space, particularly in Cape Town. While many hotels were initially resistant to the idea of stimulating demand by lowering rates, prices are now starting to fall. In fact, in Cape Town, a year after the
World Cup, prices have fallen by 28%, according to a recent Hotel Price Radar survey by HRS, a hotel ‘portal’. The average price paid by guests to the city in the second quarter of 2011 was 84.42 euros; in the same quarter last year it was still over 117 euros. The prices are now back to 2009 levels, the year before the World Cup, says HRS.
UP CLOSE & PERSONAL
BY PETER KENT “Battlefield tourism is a special interest tourism sector that’s been showing healthy growth, thanks, no doubt to regular re-runs of ‘the iconic movie Zulu’ and the fact so many Brits have forebears who fought in the Boer War. Certainly the prospect of seeing where my great, great grandfather won his medals is what hooked me. “I rented a car and driver from Durban’s brand new King Shaka International Airport through my travel agent – and for a highly affordable price. The circular drive through the spectacular Drakensberg Mountains, the siege town of Ladysmith and on to the haunting battlesites of Islandhlwana and Rorke’s Drift was awesome. My driver/guide was a fount of knowledge about the region’s colourful and often troubled past.”
From clockwise: Leopards are regularly spotted at Shumbalala Game Lodge; Villa suite at Franschhoek Country House and Villas; Zulu patterns; Luxury at Makanyane, Madikwe Private Game Reserve.
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