Unexpected journey that turned a visitor into a five-star lodge owner

Resorts are planned and not exactly a spur of the moment kind of thing. Instead, they are figured out by hospitality experts and usually have a longish runway from seed through to spouting.

Others, like Golden Impalas Bush Resort in the Dinokeng Game Reserve, came into being, not haphazardly, but happenstance. And that’s because owner Rob Marsden fell in love with Mzansi.

Civil engineer Marsden arrived in South Africa in 2001. It was meant to be a temporary posting from Hong Kong, but it became the beginning of a relationship with Mzansi that has shaped the past two decades of his life.

UK engineer transforms neglected land into a five-star lodge

“South Africa is my happy place,” he said.

Marsden convinced his employer that SA represented a hardship assignment compared to Hong Kong. The company sent him over with an attractive package and he landed straight into the kind of life he did not know he had been missing, he said.

Marsden’s career has taken him all over the world. Assignments took him from home in the United Kingdom, across Asia and the Middle East; years living between continents has allowed him to see it all. But he said SA held something different.

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The bush made a strong impression on him when he discovered its diversity and the country offered a beauty and range he had not experienced elsewhere.

“If you want mountains, you have mountains. If you want the desert, there’s desert. The bush, the countryside, the wine, the steaks, the rugby, the cricket. It’s all here,” he said.

He has a home with his Slovakian wife near Vienna. With the Ukraine war nearby, the proximity to missiles became part of daily life.

War-torn risks don’t exist in SA

“Those risks don’t exist here,” he said.

“Every country has its problems, but the positives here far outweigh the negatives.”

Seven years after settling, Marsden spotted a neglected patch of land in Dinokeng Game Reserve that came onto the market. It was little more than building ruins.

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“We were confident that if we acquired it, it could become a big five reserve,” he said.

“It was worth the gamble.”

As a builder, as Marsden called himself, hospitality was out of his comfort zone. He did it anyway.

Resort designed without any aid from experts

The resort was designed without any aid from experts and people who would traditionally plan this kind of thing.

Marsden said it was imagined from a consumer perspective, because that’s how he always experienced hotels.

He opted for a high-end development, because the middle-market was already cornered at Dinokeng.

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“We’re still the only five-star lodge in the reserve.”

But with the resort built, he had to figure out how to run the place.

And that’s where his staff came in. Golden Impalas employs around 50 people and, he said, the only guidance he was able to give them was sharing experiences from his own travels; times when service had been handled exceptionally well and a few when it had gone wrong.

Golden Impalas opened in 2019

“We said, always do it like this. Never do it like that. That’s all we knew about hospitality.”

Golden Impalas opened in 2019. Only months later, Covid arrived. It was a heavy blow for a new operation, yet the Marsdens kept every member of staff.

“If we sent them home, what would happen?” he said.

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“There was no safety net. Many of our staff support extended families that are dependent on the resort.”

Once provincial travel reopened after hard lockdown, Dinokeng saw a spike in local visitors and the lodge began to stabilise financially and operationally.

Since then, the only way’s been up.

In the country half the year

And as Marsden still works abroad, he’s only in the country half the year.

The staff run the resort and, he said, they’ve done such an amazing job of it that he doubles everyone’s tips.

Gratuities go into a pool and all staff share it, he said, because client facing staff are not the only people responsible for guest experiences.

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“If they leave R100, we put R100,” he said.

“We trust each other,” he said.

“I see the finances and pay the salaries, but they run the place.”