When the Australian borders initially closed back in March, Bench Africa released a statement encouraging the travel industry to stay strong. The company says that while they understood the situation was serious, they knew that, like most things, there is always light at the end of the tunnel, having experienced 51 years of its own ups and downs, from the low points like the Ebola outbreak and the Zimbabwe crash to high points like the company’s 50th anniversary celebrations last year.
However, now Bench Africa has reluctantly been forced to recalibrate many areas of its business, and sadly bid goodbye to valued team members. General manager, Cameron Neill has provided an update to his March 2020 message, “The Rains will Come”.
“Our calculations based on previous crises determined that although this situation wouldn’t be great for our business (or our industry) we were in a strong financial position to patiently wait it out. What we hadn’t imagined, however, was quite how long this situation would drag on for, and as time has plodded on and borders remain closed, we have had to fine-tune our strategy.
And so whilst our entire staff has remained with us throughout the past 6 months, unfortunately, due to all of the factors out of our control we have had to deviate from our original plan to ensure we continue on as a robust company into the future, however long that this may endure. This has resulted in having to say a sad farewell to a few cherished members of our close-knit team. This has been a very painful process, as these are the same friends with whom we sat around the campfire last year in South Africa when life seemed so easy. These are the same team members with whom we have shared all our ups and downs. And these are also the same individuals we will look to rehire when we can ultimately return to business as usual.
Bench Africa remains in a stable financial position as we await the inevitable end to restrictions. We are already seeing signs of a return to normality, with African borders beginning to open up again, subject, of course, to strict conditions for entry.
It’s these well-established protocols that saw East and Southern Africa entirely evade the Ebola pandemic in 2014. In general, Africa’s statistics are comparatively remarkable and their response to the pandemic is noteworthy. Despite having over a population of one billion, Africa’s figures are the second-lowest in the world, second only to Oceania.
We are proud to watch the nations of Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, Mauritius, Namibia and Egypt really stepping up to the plate, having been awarded the WTTC Safe Travel Stamp in recognition of their implementation of global, standardised health and hygiene protocols – meeting the World Health Organisation (WHO) standards. This certainly was not by luck!
Bench Africa looks forward to welcoming tourists back to Africa. It is, after all already set up perfectly for post-pandemic travel; open spaces, low population density and well-practised safety protocols make visiting Africa a perfect proposition. Most importantly, the very reason we return to Africa still remains. The safari experience is as amazing as it ever was and that hasn’t changed since the human world shut down. As most other destinations are frantically making changes, rethinking how they do things and offering alternatives to their core attractions, Africa is already the perfect set up. After all, an elephant is an elephant, whether or not you are wearing a mask. We won’t be sanitising the leopards after each sighting. The lions will keep their distance.
We may be leaner, hungrier and a little irritated that the rain took so long, but we will be here.
We hope you will be there with us.
Onward we go.
Let’s wait for the rain.
