How does a luxury train company give back to the communities it travels through? In this engaging follow-up conversation, André reconnects with Tiffany Vos-Thane, and we dive into Rovos Rail’s sustainability efforts—from using bamboo products and locally made amenities to cutting water use by 90% with custom-built vacuum toilets (yes, it’s fascinating!).

We also explore Rovos Rail’s ambitious journeys across 10 African countries, including pioneering trips into Angola and the challenges of navigating visas, corruption, and unpredictable rail lines.

If you love travel, adventure, and brilliant problem-solving, this episode is for you!

Deutsch: Du kannst diesen Podcast auch auf Deutsch hören: “Africa with André auf Deutsch”

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Rovos Rail: https://rovos.com/

Rovos Rail partners with these South African companies for their sustainability products:

Msulwa Life: https://msulwalife.co.za/

Katavi Botanicals: https://katavibotanicals.com/

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Episode 16: Keeping Rovos on Track: The Team, The Community & Creative Solutions

[00:00:08] André: Hello, hello. It's lovely to have you listen in on part two of our discussion with Tiffany Vos-Thane, who is the Chief Operations Officer at Rovos Rail, the family-owned luxury train company in South Africa.

In the first part of our discussion, we spoke a little bit about how her mom and dad started the company and about the staff who make these experiences memorable for their guests.

Today, we will start by chatting about how the company gives back to the communities that they operate in.

Welcome back, Tiffany.

[00:00:38] André: Tell us, about some of the community projects that Rovos is involved with, because I know that you want to make the company more green, and you work with quite a lot of interesting projects in the communities.

We've done tremendous amounts of work in that space in terms of using better sort of biodiesels and, using, recyclable material across the whole train. So completely removing single use plastics.

There's been a huge amount of, work done to enhance the overall experience, even our shampoo and conditioning bottles are aluminium and recyclable. But all of them are made by local companies. For us, investing in the local communities around us is very important.

My mother Anthea has been spearheading this since day one, and she has always been proudly South African through and through. So, nothing you see on board the train is sourced from anywhere overseas, everything is made or manufactured in South Africa. The only thing on board that we have that is international, is our premium spirits, because we have to have the Grey Goose vodkas and the Glenfiddich whiskeys and all of that, because our international customers expect it.

But with that, we're working with an amazing company called “Masilwa”, which is, tiny, but now they're producing all of these small products for us, whether it's the face pads and our amenity bag, um, the lip balms, they're helping us to create our golf gifting, which we give to our golfing guests everything is made locally by a local community and is all recyclable.

[00:03:13] Tiffany: I just love these small little businesses that we support.

We've also gone and done things like, changing the linen processes on board, you know, not replacing linen every day, which is what we were doing. Nobody expects that anymore.

With our food and beverage, particularly our food, we are only working with local farms. Now, everything is organically or locally sourced as far as possible. Uh, you know, it's a hugely important part of our ethos as a business. And we're consistently improving or changing whenever we can.

We obviously, as you mentioned earlier, travel through 10 African countries. So we are passing through multiple communities on our journeys. Many of these areas, even an area called Gwanda, that is in Zimbabwe.

[00:03:33] André: That sounds fascinating, Tiffany.

[00:03:43] André: And this market sells food to your kitchen or who, who shops at this market?

[00:03:56] André: Okay, so you do a stop for the guests to get out?

[00:04:02] André: yeah, no, no, no,

And even now traveling through Angola, we're one of the first tourism companies to be going through Angola. So just again the organic growth of these little pop up, markets or stores or obviously just supporting the local community, whether we're booking game drive vehicles or guiding or walking tours, there's a huge amount of opportunity.

And then of course, on a completely uncharming topic is our waters and toilet facilities on board.

My dad started, creating this makeshift toilet, a vacuum toilet. Part of it's come from Sweden, I think, and part of it we are actually manufacturing ourselves. And the whole point of this is to be able to reduce the consumption of water on board the train.

Now, if you're traveling from Cape Town to Dar es Salaam, which is a 16-day journey, you know, we're traveling through parts of Africa where there's very little water.

We have to fill up with water throughout the trip, of course for showers, for toilets, for you know general use, and it's sometimes quite a challenge.

So, these vacuum toilets use far less. I mean, we've actually reduced our water consumption by 90 percent.

[00:05:27] Tiffany: We've only managed to introduce this vacuum toilet on one of the six trains we run.

And because we are actually making it ourselves, there's a lot of issues that come up that you don't expect.

There's a lot of training that has to happen with the maintenance teams on board. You know, all sorts of things crop up and before we go and roll it out throughout the whole business, you have to make sure it works a hundred percent, and that there's no complaints and guests are happy.

But I mean, that's just my dad, you know, facing a challenge head on and going, "well, what can we do about it? Well, let's create our own toilets. Why not?"

"Is water going to become a bigger issue or not?

We don't know. So rather take control of the situation before it becomes something we can't get around."

So, you know, that's just something else, which is obviously not a glamorous thing to talk about at all, but it's a reality. And it's can and will make a huge difference to us running trains in Africa for the future.

And in, I think in 2019, just before COVID, you started this trip into Angola that you just mentioned, which is not something that is on a lot of people's bucket list.

[00:06:52] André: Give us, one or two of the challenges that you had in opening up a journey into such a very, I'm going to say different, country because it's just not as touristically developed as a lot of its neighbouring countries.

You know, there's only so many train people in the world, like real train lovers in the world. But as the business has grown over the last 35 years, I mean, we're turning 36 in April, I can't quite believe it, but is that there's been this introduction of new journeys, because we have to keep introducing new trips.

We have a really large base of regular travellers that come back time and time again, who want something new, something fresh, and it's important that we are conquering all of the countries that we can reach.

[00:08:13] Tiffany: So, introducing the Namibian Safari was critical and it's doing so well for us.

We're now running through Mozambique and up into Zimbabwe, which is our Southern cross journey, which is also very successful.

And of course, because we were going all the way to Dar es Salaam, and by that point had pretty much conquered nine of the countries we could travel to, as soon as it was announced that they had repaired the line between Lobito and the DRC- naturally they had repaired that line because of the copper that they wanted to retrieve from the DRC.

But we were thrilled, because all of a sudden there was a brand-new beautiful train line built from the coast of Angola into the heart of Africa. And you know, the challenges we have faced, have certainly been mainly with the DRC.

[00:09:39] Tiffany: Angola have been an absolute pleasure. They have been open for tourism for years, because they needed to diversify from diamonds and mining, and they have been wonderful to deal with. I mean the visas are still astronomical in Luanda, and most of Angola is still a very expensive country to travel to, but they've been very helpful with visas, very helpful with the access to the line itself.

But of course, the DRC has been a totally different story, because the corruption is rife there. Nobody wants to make a decision, and the train line itself is, you know, a little bit bumpy. It's completely fine to travel on, but it's not like a brand-new line that we have in Angola.

So, visas have been an uphill battle, trying to get access agreements for just traveling that short little distance in between, has been an uphill challenge. And we sometimes, even before one of our inaugural trips to the Trail of Two Oceans, we didn't have our visas until the day before our guests arrived into the country. Can you just imagine how much weight we lost and the stress that that had caused?

[00:10:53] Tiffany: But since then, things have gotten much better, because we now know how to work with them.

But Angola has been a dream and Angola will become one of the next places to travel, because they've got the money, they've got the desire.

And I know that any major tourism player, from a supplier standpoint, will be looking at Angola to figure out, "where can we develop? Where can we build a lodge? What can we do? Where can we add landing strips?" It's going to come and it's going to come quickly. And we're just excited to be one of the first people going there, because by the time everybody else starts going there, we will have an established trip.

[00:11:36] Tiffany: Yes. Yes.

[00:11:43] Tiffany: So, on average, those, longer journeys, we'll have 30 to 32 staff members, and that will include our drivers, because we drive our own locomotives in those countries. Um, maintenance, laundry, everyone.

But, you know, we have nearly 500 staff working at Rovos. 200 of which are train staff. Now, we are, very well versed at handling visas, dealing with that, but you know, you've got, some of these staff members are 18 years old, they're 20, they don't even understand where their passport is, let alone what a visa is.

So, our HR departments, and our train operations department, are like a bunch of moms and they really, you know, keep everybody in line and make sure that everybody's paperwork is up to date.

But, one of the services we offer on all of these cross country journeys, is that our guest services manager on board, they manage all of the passports.

[00:13:05] André: I mean you have many years of experience and sure, you'll find someone who wants to assert his power every now and again,

[00:13:12] André: but your, experience over the years does count for something.

My parents said, when they started the business, when they decided to make it all inclusive, they said the worst thing for them going to hotels, is when they are reminded every day of how much money they're spending, because inevitably you're eating at a restaurant or buying drinks and you're getting a bill at the end of it. And they just said that it was a pain and they'd rather the guest not, they're paid upfront, everything's done.

[00:13:52] André: Your dad has been the face of Rovos for many years. So, I'm glad that you corrected me in the beginning when you said that it's your dad and your mom together that started the company.

[00:14:09] Tiffany: I don't think they had any idea how good they truly were, at running this business. I don't think they anticipated that it would grow to the size that it is today.

I speak to them about it often, because I think for my mom, she preferred being behind the scenes. For her brings a great joy to be able to go and meet with these local companies and come up with beautiful new amenities or wine lists or linen or curtains. You know, for her, that, that is her joy.

Whereas for my dad, his joy is design, coming up with new ideas, coming up with new routes. And I think for them both, they would say they don't necessarily get as much time for the joy.

Because this business has become so much bigger than they ever imagined.

I said to my dad, we can't get any bigger and we shouldn't get any bigger, because we will lose ourselves in that. And what makes Rovos special.

I think they're very proud where we are today. we're representing 10 African countries. That's fantastic. We want to evolve more into Malawi, and into Mozambique if we have the opportunity to do so. Sadly, we can't go any further north because the train track changes size.

[00:15:26] Tiffany: Cairo.

And that's certainly something in the future, but it'll have to be part charter plane. You know, we'd have to bounce, into Uganda maybe for the gorillas, go to Sudan, we wouldn't be able to do it by train, but I think they reflect and think, "okay, we've got to where we need to go to in terms of our growth".

And ironically, COVID was terrible for our business, terrible for the world, but in a weird way, it gave us a lot of time to think, talk, and recognize, that we shouldn't and can't grow any bigger, we've got to focus on quality, not quantity.

[00:16:34] Tiffany: Yes. I know that we have a lot going on, and Africa can sometimes be, you know, a tricky place to operate in. But this continent, the countries we travel through, I'm not trying to sound like we have the best continent or anything, but Africa has its own heartbeat, its own way of working, and it's beautiful and challenging.

And yes, it can be stressful, but I feel 90 percent joy.

Congrats again on 36 years of Rovos Rail.

And I know that you won't like this question, but what is your one favourite anecdote of Rovos over the years?

We used to sit at the bar and play Uno with guests and learn how to play chess, and drink all the Coca Cola, and eat all the biltong. But my, understanding of the world and my understanding of people is from Rovos. The gift of genuine conversation for me outweighs most things in life, because there's so much pretence, so many people have walls up.

There's so much going on in the world. We all have these, barriers to, you know, truly connecting. But as a kid, everybody talks to you because you're a kid. And so, I learned how to talk to people in the most genuine way that I know how.

You know, I used to carry the hairdresser's bag around, he certainly didn't need me to, but I thought, well, let me be, be useful.

I used to sit on guests’ beds while they got their hair cut, or their hair styled. And I just used to chat to them, and they would give me like a 1 Dollar tip for my service, because I carried the bag and I was, you know, seven years old. These little stories are so clear in my mind.

And that's what I said earlier, for me getting on the train, I have that similar feeling, a home away from home, I'm going to be looked after, everything's going to be okay, you're about to have an experience like no other, so be present, soak it up, enjoy it.

[00:18:47] Tiffany: Thank you, thank you so much, André

[00:18:52] Tiffany: Well, you are welcome, anytime. And so are all of your listeners.

You know, I can't encourage people more: just to come to Africa. If you have the chance to travel on Rovos, wonderful. But just come to Africa. This continent has, every single country has something different to offer. The people are different. The cultures are different. The food is different. But overall, you're going to get the same feeling, and that's warmth and welcoming people, you know. So, I hope many of your listeners come to Africa soon.

[00:18:52] Tiffany: Thank you so much for having me, André.

Thank you for listening. I'd very much appreciate you giving my podcast a rating on Spotify or Apple when you get a chance. Till the next time!