AN INCENTIVE COMPANY RETROSPECTIVE
A journey unplanned A story from Rupert Jeffries – Executive Chairman of Dragonfly Africa & Green Route Africa.
I
am often asked how Dragonfly Africa came about, and why it is so named. I was fortunate to have been bought up in Chelsea, London in the wonderful sixties era. In those days there were frequent sightings of the likes of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Jimmy Hendrix walking around Kings Road or eating in the local restaurants there. In 1976, I was working for a large advertising agency, Leo Burnett. I did a six-month probation period in the mail room delivering mail throughout the building. I was then, after some years, offered the opportunity of a transfer to their Johannesburg office. This I readily accepted, and
so began a new life in Africa. In 1979 my wife and I took a weekend break to a small hotel quite near to the Kruger National Park. The hotel was called Cybele Forest Lodge. It was the closest thing to an English Country Hotel that I had seen in South Africa. Within a matter of months, we had taken out a lease. And subsequently we bought the property, which was 120 hectares (300 acres) in the middle of a forest, with a river and waterfall. There was a lot of work to do, and renovations and improvements to the product offering were ongoing for over 30 years. In 1983, Cybele Forest Lodge and Health Spa became the very first hotel in South Africa to be invited into the Parisbased Relais & Châteaux Hotel chain. As if I didn’t have enough to keep me busy at the lodge, I realised that we were located in one of the most beautiful and unspoiled parts of the country. And so, in 1982, Dragonfly Helicopter Adventures was created. We worked out a stunning aerial
24 Business Events Africa December 2019
routing that would culminate in a luxury champagne picnic on top of a mountain overlooking the Kruger National Park. The trip was named Mountain Magic. We would send a chef on the flight to set up and serve the lunch. And the Dragonfly name evolved from the similarity between a helicopter rotor blade and a Dragonfly. We hosted many well-known personalities at the lodge over the years, including Tina Turner, Priscilla Presley and John Cleese. And at about this time, I realised that while we had a quality hotel product that people really enjoyed, the real big draw of Africa is going on a safari and seeing the animals. So I began putting together packages with one of the nearby lodges within the Kruger Park area, Londolozi Game Reserve, and offered travel itineraries featuring the two products. The market really took to these combinations – which I had actually mapped out late at night at Cybele – and
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