We run on solar and we have not printed since 2019

Our office sits on an estate in Hoedspruit, on the edge of the Greater Kruger. It runs on solar, with Eskom behind it as backup, and we have not printed a page of client paperwork since 2019. Neither of those was a green policy. Both were the practical way to run a small company from the bush, and both have stayed because they work better than what they replaced.

What follows is the two of us answering the questions people actually ask once they find out how small we are.

In short

• We run on solar. Eskom is the backup, not the other way round.
• Nothing has been printed for a client since 2019.
• Proposals, itineraries and confirmations arrive as files you can open on a phone.
• Sian and Vikki plan the trips, with Roxanne running reservations from Johannesburg.
• When the line comes down in a storm, the office keeps working.

Why does a safari company need its own power?

Vikki. Because we sit at the end of a long rural line. Storms take it down, transformers fail, and the fix arrives when it arrives. None of that is anybody's fault out here; it is what a smallholding in this part of Limpopo looks like. What we could not accept was going dark while someone in London was waiting on a quote at four in the afternoon their time. So the panels came first, and the grid sits behind them.

Sian. It changes how you think about a working week. You watch the weather the way a lodge manager does, and you learn what your own systems cost to run. A run of overcast days in January and the heavy work gets planned differently. That sounds like a constraint. In practice it made us better at working around things we cannot control, which is most of what this job actually is.

You plan differently when you can see what your own week costs. It makes you careful with other people's time as well as your own.

— Sian Loehrer, co-founder, Marula Hill

What happened to the brochures?

Vikki. 2019 was the last time we printed anything. A printed itinerary is out of date the day it leaves the printer. Rates move. A lodge closes a wing for a refurbishment. An internal flight shifts and the whole second page is wrong. We were correcting paper by hand and posting it, which is not a service; it is an apology with a stamp on it.

Sian. Now a proposal is a file. If a lodge comes back to me with a change at eight in the evening, the version sitting in your inbox can be right before you wake up. You can read it on a phone in a queue and forward it to whoever is coming with you. If you want it on paper, print it at your end, close to departure, so that you are carrying the version that is current on the day you fly. There is more on why we set the company up this way in our story.

Does any of this make a safari greener?

Vikki. Not meaningfully, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. One long-haul flight outweighs everything our office will ever save. Anybody selling you a safari as a low-carbon holiday is selling you something. What our setup buys us is reliability, plus the ability to be honest about what we can and cannot claim.

Sian. The part that does matter is where the money goes once you have landed. Conservation levies. The wages of the people who guide you, track for you and cook for you. Reserves that only exist because tourism pays for them, and community land that earns more standing than it would cleared. That is worth asking any operator about, and it is a better question than what our office runs on.

What should someone ask a company this small?

Sian. Ask who you will be speaking to when something goes wrong at eleven at night, and whether that person has been to the lodge they are selling you. Ask what they would change about the itinerary if you gave them two more nights. The answers tell you quickly whether you are talking to a planner or a portal.

Vikki. Then ask us what we have not seen. We recommend the places we have stayed where we can, but we have not stayed everywhere, and we would have to be well over two hundred years old to have managed it. Where we are relying on a lodge team we trust rather than our own night in the room, we will tell you so.

None of this is glamorous. Panels on a roof, and a habit of not printing things. The people who plan your trip answer their own email. It is also, as far as we can tell, why the planning tends to hold together. If you want to see how we start a trip before you speak to either of us, begin with the shape of your safari.

FAQ

Is the Marula Hill office off-grid?

No. We run on solar with Eskom as the backup supply. The panels carry the working day and the grid is there for the days when they cannot.

Will I be sent a printed itinerary or brochure?

No. Everything reaches you as a file you can open on a phone or a laptop. If you would like paper, print it yourself close to departure so that you are carrying the current version rather than one that was accurate two months ago.

What happens if you lose power while my trip is being planned?

The office keeps running on solar and the work carries on. If the internet line itself is down, one of us moves onto mobile data. It is one of the reasons we built it this way.

Is Marula Hill a sustainable safari company?

We would rather answer that narrowly than broadly. Our office runs on solar and we do not print, which is a small thing. The larger contribution any safari makes is the money that reaches conservation and local employment on the ground, and we are happy to talk that through for any lodge we suggest.

Who will I actually be dealing with?

Vikki or Sian on the planning, and Roxanne, our reservations manager in Johannesburg, on the booking side. It is a small group, and nobody hands you on to somebody who has never seen the reserve you are going to.

Vikki Jackson and Sian Loehrer are the co-founders of Marula Hill Travel. We plan boutique safaris across South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, Namibia and Mozambique from an office outside Hoedspruit, on the western edge of the Greater Kruger.