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BREAKINGTRAVELNEWS
Roving around South Africa in style There are few rail companies in the world that can actually offer you a private train to travel around a continent. Rovos Rail is one of those companies. For £70,000 or 105,000 euros you can charter the smallest of three trains, sleeping 44 to take you on a five-day journey from Pretoria to Kruger National Park.
Included in the price is a game drive in the park, then it is on to Durban for swimming in the sea, then the Drakensberg for horse-riding through the mountains, ending up with a private trip to battlefield properties in KwaZulu-Natal. Rovos Rail also won “Africa's Leading Safari Train” accolade at this year’s World Travel Awards. The latest tour that the luxury train firm is launching encompasses luxury travel between Cairo and Cape Town. Breaking Travel News talked to David Patrick, marketing manager at Rovos Rail about the new route. BTN: Can you tell us the latest developments going on with Rovos Rail? PATRICK: We are launching our Cape to Cairo programme in 2008, which is very exciting. We are unveiling four itineraries between Cape Town and Cairo in Egypt -- one will be a 27 day www.breakingtravelnews.com
programme, the second will be 34 days. This trip is a conjunction of luxury train and luxury aircraft. If it were possible we would take the train all the way from the Cape to Cairo. But unfortunately there isn’t a railway line that goes all the way. This was one of the dreams of Cecil John Rhodes but unfortunately he did not complete it. As a result we are going to be taking our train from Cape Town to Victoria Falls on two of the itineraries and then fly from Victoria Falls the rest of the way to Cairo with stops in Zanzibar, the Serengeti, Uganda, the source of the Nile, Khartoum in Sudan and then finally a Nile cruise up to Aswan and then through to Cairo. It is a very exciting programme and I think there is a huge mystique and attraction in travelling to the northern tip of Africa from the southern tip, or vice versa. The response has been very positive and we are very excited by it.
I think it is going to be an enormously successful programme. BTN: What are the costs and logistics involved in launching this program? PATRICK: In terms of the cost, the 27day programme, which includes a train itinerary from Cape Town to Victoria Falls, is $22,000 (16,900 euros) per person sharing and that is a fully inclusive price. This includes all travel, accommodation on the train and accommodation in hotels during the flying portion of the journey. The 34day itinerary will cost $29,995 (23,000 euros) and once again it is fully inclusive. The logistics involved are huge, as you can imagine. BTN: What sets Rovos Rail apart in the luxury train market? PATRICK: We market ourselves as the most luxurious train in the world. And on an apples-for-apples basis we offer
more luxurious features than any other luxury train. Also I think one of our trademarks is our attention to detail, and that comes from our owner, Rohan Vos. We are 100 percent privately owned and there is huge attention to detail that comes down from the top and that is instilled in all the staff that work for the company. I think that’s something that people remember when they leave our trains and when they have travelled with us. BTN: Which markets are you focused on? PATRICK: Our main markets are without doubt the U.S., the UK and then Europe. Those are the three big ones. We have a number of niche markets around the world, Japan being one of them. South America is another, which is growing nicely as well; about 90-95 percent of our guests are international travellers. www.rovos.co.za 119