SABA-Training: Fostering the luxury mindset

For eleven years now, we have been on the fascinating journey of positioning Rhulani among the best safari destinations, and the International Butler Academy SABA has been accompanying us on this path for almost as long. This May, Rhulani's employees enjoyed a week-long re-training and received new, inspiring input to ensure our service promise to our guests of the highest standard.

Bea Liebenberg, Assistant Trainer of SABA, visited Rhulani for the first time and was fascinated to see the state of the lodge and the mood among the staff. This is certainly a success of our ongoing work, especially thanks to Mr. Bram West, SABA's General Manager, who this year again led the training program personally and captivated our staff not only with his undisputed knowledge and professionalism, but above all with his charisma and humor.

After a year's break, the training contains some elements of repetition and refresher. But we also took a big step forward. Beab Liebenberg says: “It was all about fostering a luxury mindset, which includes aspects such as engagement, communication and language skills.”

In the group sessions, we not only practiced how to properly present a bottle of wine to the guest or how to beautifully prepare a serving tray, but there were also some teamwork tasks that were a lot of fun and could only be completed successfully together.

The images of how the teams had to meticulously build the highest possible tower out of loose stones were unique. The stories from the lives of our employees, which they were willing to tell in front of the assembled group, touched us emotionally and these definitely strengthened our team spirit.

The maintenance team, which works more in the background, was also deliberately included in the program this time. Knocking the door and entering as well as how to create a compliment while fixing a guest complaint were new focus points.

New ideas for additional "daily activities" that will enrich our guests' daytime program have been developed. So you can look forward to one or two surprises!

We would like to thank SABA for another great week that we were able to spend together, and also Rhulani's owner Marisa, who is particularly passionate about this type of training and was personally there this time too.