Are private reserves rip-offs?
There are reasons why rates seem so steep
The question I get asked most often in my roadtrip travels – other than the perennial “which is better, Hilux or Defender?” – is whether lodges and camps on private game reserves justify their generally steep prices.
I can’t even begin to answer the Toyota-Land Rover conundrum but I’ve given a lot of thought to the issue whether visitors to private reserves get value for their money, especially after visiting two such properties in Mpumalanga and Limpopo in December.
Simplistically, there are three questions tourism marketers need answered before formulating their holiday offerings: who is the target market, what are that market’s expectations and what pricing levels can the market sustain?
If, for instance, British couples seeking once-in-a-lifetime safari experiences are happy to pay £1 500 for two nights in the lap of bushveld luxury, then that (or its equivalent in other currencies) is going to be the basic rate.
However, R30 000 doesn’t sound so good to the average South African – even though this includes luxury accommodation and three meals a day, all “nonpremium brand” drinks, morning and afternoon two game drives with knowledgeable guides and trackers, laundry and… wait for it!... free Wi-Fi in communal areas.
Got to be a rip-off, right?
I’m not so sure it is.
Yes, I’ve been to some overthe-top properties in the 30 years since I first visited a private lodge (Motswari in the Timbavati) where the level of ostentation is outrageous but here the focus is opulent living rather than the wildlife experience.
The only time I’ve heard of these places being empty was during hard lockdown last year. For the most part, they’re pretty full all year round (albeit with the only locals being lodge and reserve staff ).
As Lapalala Wilderness Reserve CEO Glenn Phillips says, conservation is expensive. A previous head of the Kruger National Park (KNP), he said SANPark’s flagship reserve had an operating budget of around R1 billion.
Aside from direct revenue from visitors, SANParks receives money from partnerships with the private sector (lodge concessions, shops and restaurants, etc) and a whopping annual allocation from government.
Private reserves do not have access to taxpayer subsidies so require some form of commercialisation to finance their animal-hugging activities. The most typical of these are limited hunting, game-breeding and tourism.
The big attraction of private reserves is that you can see wildlife in a way extremely few people are able to do.
In the first place, you’re never going to experience the traffic snarl-ups you do at a KNP predator sighting where a few lucky buggers hog ringside seats for all they’re worth.
At worst you’ll experience a steady rotation of open-topped vehicles, seldom more than five at a time, giving everyone the opportunity to view animals they’ve paid so much (and often travelled far) to see.
In low visitor-volume reserves, a certain amount of off-road driving is allowed and guests can get really close to the Big Five for extended periods.
For me, that’s the nub of going to the bush.
In the end, the value proposition offered by private reserves is worth considering, not for a spontaneous weekend jaunt but as a serious annual breakaway.
The Covid pandemic, strangely enough, has been the best thing to happen to South Africans who could previously only dream of visiting a private reserve.
Both Tintswalo Lapalala and Nkomazi Private Game Reserve near eManzana/Badplaas in Mpumalanga (the second of the properties I visited) are currently offering discounted rates to locals. At Tintswalo, the nightly rate per person sharing a luxury double tent drops from R7 200 to R3 960. At Nkomazi the tariff ’s been reduced from R7 360 per two-person tent a night to R4 420.
The only exclusion from the usual bells-and-whistles package is you’ll have to pay for drinks.