The great outdoors now come with all luxury trappings. Glamping offers comforts that, at times, exceed services provided by five-star hotels.



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Tourism in Soweto, a township in the south west of
Johannesburg in South Africa, has grown exponentially over the years,
contributing millions to its economy. And with disposable incomes in such urban
township economies increasing, more people are finding ways to spend money
through means they historically didn’t have. 



Thato Mothopeng is one of the few entrepreneurs in the
tourism sector here without a formal degree or training, but has a roaring
business nevertheless. 



His passion for enterprise and fun made him pour all his
savings into his startup, Ghetto Mentality Entertainment, which birthed four
other products: the Township Small Business Showcase, an annual event
showcasing township businesses to other businesses; a restaurant called Sanchos
outdoor kitchen that’s a food and art kitchen; then the Soweto Tourism
Association with a mandate to develop tourism businesses in Soweto, creating
employment opportunities and skilling the youth; and last but not the least,
the Soweto Camp Festival that has been running for seven years now.



“This is one of my difficult projects because you have to
get everybody into the [singular] vision of creating an economy using our own
products. I try and show that potential at the Soweto Camp Festival where I
fuse small businesses together to render services for people coming to the
festival,” Mothopeng says.



The festival happens every Easter, on the long weekend,
boosting Soweto’s tourism prospects.



This year, the camp is offering free stalls to emerging
businesses in the art, craft and fashion industries.



The festival started as Camp Chair Sessions, a weekend event
promoting outdoor activities in 2010 prior to the Soccer World Cup, at Lebo’s
Soweto Backpackers, 17kms from Johannesburg. In 2011, it was converted to the
Soweto Camp Festival after guests wanted to camp with the hosts.



The Soweto Camp Chair Sessions encourage artists,
entrepreneurs and people from different disciplines to promote the idea of
camping, says loyal attendee and now the general manager of the Soweto Camp
Festival, Kgomotso Morotolo.



“I met Thato at the camp chair sessions. At the sessions, we
would have between 2,000 to 4,500 people coming with their camp chairs and it
was housed at Lebo’s Backpackers. So, we were creating a lifestyle of traveling
and camping, entrepreneurship and socializing,” Morotolo says.



&nbsp;The first three
festivals were hosted at the same venue where the sessions were held. Slowly,
the camp site was getting smaller because of the sheer volume of attendees;
Mothopeng had to look for another space. 



Mothopeng and the owner of Lebo’s Soweto Backpackers, Lebo
Malepa, had to part ways.



“Thato saw the bigger picture, one of the reasons we parted
was because he wanted to go big and I wanted to go small. He was used to
hosting big gigs and I’m not used to hosting such because I deal with tourists
and tourists usually want smaller groups of people for the safety. That’s when
we agreed that he can move on and he had a lot of ideas which he is including
now in his package,” says Malepa. 



Mothopeng was looking for something with sentimental value,
a place that spoke to the inhabitants of the township, and in 2014, Mofolo
Park, 3kms from the iconic Vilakazi Street seemed fitting. This is also where
FORBES AFRICA is doing this interview, under one of the many trees, on a bench
with the passionate entrepreneur who is wearing a colorful bucket hat; symbolic
of a young Sowetan.



“When Nelson Mandela came back from prison and wanted to
address students, he came to this park; the late jazz musician Hugh Masekela
performed here, among others, this is a very historic space. That’s what we are
trying to do, to revive the history because we also want to play a part in the
making of history. We also want to be part of the history writers; we also want
to talk about the greats within our time,”&nbsp;
Mothopeng says.



Their current venue is a source of pride. 



“It’s a green site. This is a place where people get to come
and relax, chill and unwind with nature; it’s something we don’t experience
because of lack of greenery in the township. With that being said, we have over
100 trees in this venue.”



Running the venue and providing the best service is not
without challenges.



“Having to convince City Parks [parks and zoos run by the
City of Johannesburg] is a challenge and [upkeep] costs us about R100,000
($6,900) to utilize for a weekend with toilets and fencing. It was stressful
but at the end of the day we did it without a cent and we made a bit of money
after that. Now I have a bit of a budget that I saved up for rainy days,” he
says.



The festival has reached the 1,000 people mark from its
inception when they hosted about 200 campers at Lebo’s Soweto Backpackers, and
about 60% of them are non-Sowetans, accommodating&nbsp; guests from Lesetho, Swaziland and America,
among others. In 2018, the project made R1.4 million ($97,168), comprising
youth-owned township businesses and service providers, and is targeting R2.5
million ($173,514) in 2019.



“I remember in 2017, we faced a loss because we were
focusing on paying people we owed. We had a loss of about R250,000 ($17,351) in
2017. We had to chase that so we could recoup our name before 2018. With all
the hard work, we left 2018 debtless,” he recalls. 



Mothopeng attributes his growth as an entrepreneur to the
many challenges he has faced along the way. Last year, their ticketing service
provider went on strike for two weeks before the festival, which was
detrimental for the team as it impacted negatively on sales. Since then, they
have learned to take responsibility for their product by handling all bookings
and ticket sales, and outsource if their work load was beyond their capacity. 



The vision of the Soweto Camp Festival is to create a ripple
effect where other city parks are used as camping parks like they do at Mofolo
Park which showcases the history of Soweto, the artistry, culinary finesse,
fashion and music. Moreover, the conventional forms of pitching a tent,
starting a fire and hiding in a bush to relieve yourself, has evolved over
time. 



Glamping Gurus



Glamping, which is a combination of glamor and camping,
provides people with all their creature comforts while also immersed in the
great outdoors. 



About 60kms from Mofolo Park in Soweto is a glamping farm in
Magaliesburg in north Gauteng called Koesterfonteinfarm founded by Zai Khan, a
coastal girl and beach lover who has been living in Johannesburg for 20 years.



“I worked in the media for 18 years until I decided I wanted
to be an entrepreneur. I like being my own boss, I wanted that life and didn’t
have an idea how I was going to carve it, so I bought a beautiful farm in
Magaliesburg. My dad is a bee-keeper, he makes honey and thought I should
continue my father’s legacy, I bought the farm to keep bees but it didn’t work
because the farm didn’t have flora,” Khan says.



Although the farm was bought to continue a legacy, it is in the heart of an enterprising environment. Magaliesburg is home to the Cradle of Humankind, as well as Maropeng and the Sterkfontein caves, among other natural wonders. Magaliesburg serves as an escape from the city and is about an hour’s drive from Johannesburg.



&nbsp;Tourists also make
stops in the mountain range while heading to the North West Province which is
home to Sun City, an upscale resort with hotels, a casino, and a water park in
inland South Africa that borders Botswana. 



Khan was stuck with a farm, and was unemployed, but selling
fire wood she had found on the property. Not long after owning the property,
she decided to branch into hospitality, a decision she regards as the best because
travel companies had contacted her to do her marketing. She has been fully
booked since. 



“When I bought the property, it had a beautiful barn house,
a rock cottage and a structured tent and I liked it [the tent], so [I thought]
if I like it, someone else might like it. So, it started with a tent and I
wanted people to experience what I had experienced, and that is how I found out
about glamping,” she recalls. 



Khan used a local artisan to refurbish the farm and give it
an unruffled feel; she liked it so much that she is currently working on
replicating two more because of the demand from guests.&nbsp; 



“The tent has a king-size bed. It’s like you’re sleeping in
a tented structure but its an en suite, which has a shower, a bath, and a fire
pit, [to keep] you warm when you’re inside. It’s cocoon-like and cosy, it has a
delta gusto coffee machine and a kitchen. Everything is there and that’s what I
went with it [glamping]. Now I have a lot of big companies copying the idea of
glamping, that’s how I realized I’m onto something and stuck to it,” Khan says.




Khan’s plans are to grow the glamping industry in South
Africa and become a “glamping guru”, a specialist in that field, she says.



“If the tourism industry is worth trillions, then the 1% of
glamping is not a market to ignore, because it hasn’t reached its potential
growth, there is so much potential to grow in it.”



Today Khan is a part of on&nbsp;
incubation program with flight centre, and is learning about hospitality
as she doesn’t have a qualification. She is also sitting on the board of Cradle
of Humankind Local Tourism Association to increase her knowledge of the tourism
and hospitality sector. 



Khan’s farm accommodates 12 people and is being
expended&nbsp; to house 20 people with an
additional two tents. The property has 21 hectors of land and employs two
people with a turnover of R250,000 in 2018.



“Glamping is a combination of glamor and camping, its where
you get to experience the great outdoors without ever having to pitch a tent
because we have the tent ready with 300 tread count linen, Le Creuset pots, a
delta gusto coffee machine and everything is there ready and waiting. We have
no Wi-Fi, but we promise you a better connection,” she says.



Glamping is a novelty and is a growing industry that’s
exploring various ways to make the experience as convenient as possible. Ever
imagined having a butler at your camp site?



Karabo Sepharatla is a 35-year-old from Soweto who runs a
camping butler service he calls Camping Khapela; (khapela is a name taken from
a character who was a butler in popular South African soapie, Generations). 



“About five years ago, I went on a camping trip with the
boys to a weekend music festival in Mozambique and it was a horrible
experience. We had only bought alcohol and food and some of us couldn’t even
set up tents so we’d sleep in other people’s tents, and we had cramps. 



“I had invited other friends who do VIP protection and they
had everything; the whole set up. What they did was hire a local guy to clean
and look after their camp site and prepare food while they were out having fun.
I thought to myself I would pay top dollar for that and city people would pay
top dollar for that as well,” he says.



He went back home and did research on why many black people
were not camping. “I found historical reasons because black people were not
allowed to travel. Now that there is freedom, we don’t know where to go,”
Sepharatla says.



On his return to Johannesburg, Sepharatla received a warning
from work for skipping work but wasn’t bothered because he didn’t enjoy his job
anyway. On the same day, he turned on the radio and they were talking about how
black people didn’t camp. He called in and erroneously told them he provided a
camping service as though the business already existed. A few minutes later, he
a received a call; a gentleman and five of his friends wanted to go to Coffee
Bay, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa over New Year 2014.



“I sent a quote in three days, the client paid a deposit and
I bought my first tent, and I started from there. I didn’t make profit, but we
managed to get everything that was needed. Improvements continued, and we
started taking pictures for social media to promote our services and the black
people market showed interest,” he says.



Sepharatla says when Camping Khapela started, there were
only five service providers of such and currently there are six in Johannesburg
doing the exact same thing. 



“The turnover is good. In my first year, I made about
R60,000 ($4,164) doing six trips and this year, we’re looking at a million rand.
Our services cover the SADC region and we’re aiming to expand to Zanzibar and
Uganda and take over the African continent, and share our secrets because it
seems like no one is doing it,” he says.



Their services range from R2,000 ($139) to R5,000 ($347) on
weekend services and prices vary depending on requirements.



“Camping Khapela is the ultimate camping experience it’s
like having your own butler at the camp site 24/7 who will pitch a tent,
prepare breakfast, lunch and dinner and make sure your site is clean, basically
a Khapela at your camp site,” says Sepharatla.



Such experiences seem to have certainly given outdoor
hospitality a new look.

Tag: City Parks

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Fancy A Butler While Camping?