Conserving its efforts

So it’s sayonara to Wilderness, which has decided to give up on the hurly-burly of the listed market and head for the deep peace of the unlisted world.

The company’s listing on the JSE will be terminated on July 3, after which it can get on with doing its thing without the costs and admin of a listing. The share has been a tidy performer, doubling in price over the past five years as the business has grown.

Wilderness has an excellent reputation as a provider of high-end wildlife experiences, combining luxury travel with sound conservation ethics. Its vertically integrated business model grabs the punters: it has marketing, sales and reservations businesses, it provides the camps that make up the itinerary and it shunts visitors around with its airline and touring and transfer services.

This ownership of the supply chain allows it to maintain the levels of quality that upmarket clients expect, as well as the reassuring knowledge that its aircraft are maintained and the pilots clued up.

Wilderness is now building a presence in Rwanda, which the FT Weekend has described as “this year’s hottest high-end holiday destination in Africa”. Its Bisate Lodge is the place to go to pay $1,500 to spend an hour with the gorillas, while it has just opened Magashi in the Akagera National Park. Akagera was all but wiped out by the arrival of half a million refugees in the aftermath of the genocide, and its recovery shows what well-managed conservation can achieve.

Taste has had to produce some seriously fancy footwork to halt the slide