Safari Ostrich Show Farm was again this year part of the Gartour Stand at Indaba. For those of you who might not know, Gartour is a Private Marketing Association with our main aim to promote the Klein Karoo and Garden Route as a tourist destination and more specifically to promote the products of our beautiful region. We managed to get a stand in the ICC this year for the first time and had a great show with many Tour Operators coming to visit our stand to inquire about the many activities we have to offer.  Gartour always had a stand as part of the Western Cape “section” in the DEC and I must say the atmosphere and vibe in the ICC is completely different from what we were used to.  We enjoyed being part of the ICC “gang” where you pick up trends and business quicker than at any of the other parts of the Indaba.

Winter Season

We expected to have a good winter season, since one can only have a better winter than last year when the World Cup kept a lot of our leisure market away.  Coupled with the fact that many soccer-tourists stayed in the cities where there were matches and didn’t travel far away from their base.  

We actually ended up having a fantastic winter-season thanks mainly to the Indian Market that travelled in big numbers to South Africa and also having school groups from the U.K. mainly, that came to South Africa on sporting trips.  

The Indian Market travel most extensively in May, June and July and with our lovely Vegetarian Menu Options for both Vegan and Jain clients Safari Ostrich Farm became a highlight for our Indian tourists on their trip through South Africa.  

We developed our Indian Menu Options with help from our Tour Operator clients that deal with that market and the Indian Menu has been very well received by our Indian Clients.  We went one step further and had an Indian Chef from Mumbai visit our farm for two days to train our chefs in the finer art of Indian Cuisine.  He gave us invaluable tips with regards to the combination of spices and herbs and how the Indian Clients like their food to be prepared and served.

I love spicy food and can honestly tell you that the dishes prepared for our Vegetarian Clients at Safari Ostrich Farm are magnificent.   

Workshops

Gartour hosted two workshops – one at the Balalaika Hotel in Johannesburg in early June – and one at Kirstenbosch in Cape Town in early August.  We organise and take care of logistics from beginning to end with regards sending invites to our clients, booking the venue etc.  We have lots of experience with the round-robin format since Gartour used to run workshops some years ago.         

We decided to resuscitate the workshops because our Tour Operator clients told us that they prefer attending workshops that is focused on one specific region and the products of that “route” only.  We also realized that it is not always possible for our clients to come to us for site-inspections/educationals due to time constraints and so forth. So we decided to take the product to you.  We would still prefer for you to come visit us since Paul (the owner) and I feel that Safari Ostrich Farm will sell itself much better than the two us with a power-point presentation. We are actually not so clever with computers and much prefer working with ostriches and people.

The two workshops were a great success with fantastic attendance from out travel agents and tour operator clients.  

Billy Engelbrecht

Manager