Fancy A Butler While Camping?

Published 4 years ago
camping1

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


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.

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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.

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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.

 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.

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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,”  Mothopeng says.

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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.

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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  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.

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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.

 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. 

“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  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  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.