The official date for opening of the Club Med is July 4 this year with a few soft launches before. To understand whyKwaZulu-Natalis poised to reclaim its seat at the global high table, spend an hour with Chris du Toit. As the project lead of Tinley Leisure – the man tasked with deliveringClub Med’s first-ever “Beach and Safari” resort – Du Toit isn’t just building a hotel.
He is executing a direct challenge to the tired narrative that South Africa’s tourism future begins and ends in the Western Cape. Since 2020,KZNhas been battered by a “perfect storm” of riots, floods and municipal decay. In the boardroom, it was a region many were fleeing.
But being a developer in South Africa requires a specific brand of vision, and a massive dose of resilience (Kwa-Silience as they call it in KZN), to bank on soil others have written off. “In South Africa, there is no reason to panic, you find a way,” says Du Toit. “That’s the thing about South African businesses for me.
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We don’t go somewhere else for answers; we find them here. We work hard to make things happen. “That’s been the secret at Club Med… we always find a way.” The funding partners, African Bank, the IDC, and Collins Residential, had just the type of grit required to get a massive project like this off the ground when they signed off on it during the dark days of the 2022 floods.
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