Buyers at this year’s Indaba reported South African game lodge rate increases of 20% and more.
The comment was made that other Southern and East African lodges had, in comparison, kept rate increases below 10%.
Nic Griffin, Chief Executive of The Thornybush Collection, defended the hikes. He said many game lodge industry players had kept increases to low single figures during the global economic downturn over the period 2009 to 2012, despite annual double-digit increases in their costs. “This model was simply unsustainable to prolonged growth and investment in product,” he stated.
“It’s a complete myth that game lodge operators in the mid-pricing sector make handsome returns. Costs and investment requirements have a huge impact on operating margins and the advent of poaching requires far-reaching security investment to protect the threat to wildlife,” he told Tourism Update.
Griffin said, with the upper end of the industry continuing to attract over 80% of its guests from hard currency countries, it made sense to take critical rate increases in periods of weak rand performance, particularly after the low increases.
“While The Thornybush Group contained its increases to well below the 20% mark, specials and low-yield increases over three years made the long-term trading environment unsustainable without a catch-up,” he stated, pointing out that hikes of around 17% in rand terms, would signify increases of less than 6% to hard currency countries in 2015.
Legend Lodges also indicated a recent history of low increases. A spokesperson for management said the group did not increase rates for four years, until 2013 when they were upped by 5%. This year they were increased by another 5%.
Tourism Update asked local tour operator Thompsons if it had found large increases in game lodge rates and received this reply from John Ridler, Media and Public Relations Manager: “With the exception of one group, who will raise their rates by over 30% next year, the average price increases for game lodges appear to be between 8% and 10%.”
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