PHOENIX PHIL
AH ambassador
Well this has been an interesting thread. But it has strayed a bit and I can't help but wonder if we have had what a friend of mine likes to say, a Loss of Big Picture Accident. I don't care whether a guy charges $250 or $400 per day. Every person who runs a business is in business to make money or they won't be in business for long no matter what they may charge for their services/products.
But how much money does the typical RSA PG Safari company make? Really, I haven't a clue. But I can do some math with some reasonable assumptions and come up with I think a reasonable number. So I put together a small spreadsheet using these assumptions. Again these are ASSUMPTIONS of numbers and have nothing to do with real numbers for HartzView Safaris. While my affiliation with Jacques should be well known to most here, I do not have access to the books so if my numbers somehow were to be somewhat reflective of the HV biz, it's purely accidental.
Key parameters are 30 hunting weeks per year assuming $20K in revenue per week. Revenue being the total charged, daily rates and trophy fees. The number of weeks and/or the revenue per week may go up or down some, but I'd bet not by much. I then assumed on any given week that 50% of the revenue taken in covered the daily costs associated with the hunt. These costs are just for things like food, fuel, employee costs, etc. And then I tried to come up with some reasonable cost numbers for everything from marketing to equipment to taxes. Those numbers are really a crapshoot, but I don't think are completely out of line. By the time you subtract all those costs from the original $600K revenue, this fictional business makes about $82K a year. But no business that is growing just sits still, there are other costs associated with growing the business which I've not accounted for.
I know this number is not real, it could go either up or down. But I think it puts the big picture back into focus.
Now consider the amount of time the average outfitter/PH puts in per day during hunting season, what from 6am till 9pm at night. Consider how many days of that schedule the outfitter/PH may do in a row with not a single day off. Consider that during that time, the outfitter/PH is away from his family, not able to handle the daily issues that we confront from the leaky faucet, the sick kid who needs to go to the doctor to whatever personal issues arise. But then there's the time off from hunting season right? Wrong, just about the time the season is over, there's going to be this giant list of things that have to be dealt with and in a fairly short order of time. And then of course there's marketing season from early January and into February. I love going to DSC and SCI, it's a great time. But I can tell you that after standing in the booth all day and everyday, that by the end of each show I'm tired and ready to go home, and I do just that. The outfitter/PH is on his way to some new strange bed and doing smaller get togethers and shows. And then when that's over, it's back home with a new season just around the corner.
I'm not asking any of you to shed a tear or feel sorry for these guys, they knew the gig when they signed up for it. Or at least learned the ropes early in their chosen career. But the point of this long winded diatribe is that from my point of view, the outfitters/PH's earn every freaking last Rand they put in their pocket. I don't care whether it's Chris charging $400 for a daily rate or Pieter charging $250/day and compensating for the difference with his biltong business. And either way, for these guys to be in business they must not only be making money, they must be making enough to warrant the immense amount of work it takes to run a safari business.
Furthermore, assuming a reputable outfit, whether it be the most expensive outfitter or the cheapest, an RSA PG hunt is still by far the biggest bang for the buck a hunter can get for his dollar.
But how much money does the typical RSA PG Safari company make? Really, I haven't a clue. But I can do some math with some reasonable assumptions and come up with I think a reasonable number. So I put together a small spreadsheet using these assumptions. Again these are ASSUMPTIONS of numbers and have nothing to do with real numbers for HartzView Safaris. While my affiliation with Jacques should be well known to most here, I do not have access to the books so if my numbers somehow were to be somewhat reflective of the HV biz, it's purely accidental.
Key parameters are 30 hunting weeks per year assuming $20K in revenue per week. Revenue being the total charged, daily rates and trophy fees. The number of weeks and/or the revenue per week may go up or down some, but I'd bet not by much. I then assumed on any given week that 50% of the revenue taken in covered the daily costs associated with the hunt. These costs are just for things like food, fuel, employee costs, etc. And then I tried to come up with some reasonable cost numbers for everything from marketing to equipment to taxes. Those numbers are really a crapshoot, but I don't think are completely out of line. By the time you subtract all those costs from the original $600K revenue, this fictional business makes about $82K a year. But no business that is growing just sits still, there are other costs associated with growing the business which I've not accounted for.
I know this number is not real, it could go either up or down. But I think it puts the big picture back into focus.
Now consider the amount of time the average outfitter/PH puts in per day during hunting season, what from 6am till 9pm at night. Consider how many days of that schedule the outfitter/PH may do in a row with not a single day off. Consider that during that time, the outfitter/PH is away from his family, not able to handle the daily issues that we confront from the leaky faucet, the sick kid who needs to go to the doctor to whatever personal issues arise. But then there's the time off from hunting season right? Wrong, just about the time the season is over, there's going to be this giant list of things that have to be dealt with and in a fairly short order of time. And then of course there's marketing season from early January and into February. I love going to DSC and SCI, it's a great time. But I can tell you that after standing in the booth all day and everyday, that by the end of each show I'm tired and ready to go home, and I do just that. The outfitter/PH is on his way to some new strange bed and doing smaller get togethers and shows. And then when that's over, it's back home with a new season just around the corner.
I'm not asking any of you to shed a tear or feel sorry for these guys, they knew the gig when they signed up for it. Or at least learned the ropes early in their chosen career. But the point of this long winded diatribe is that from my point of view, the outfitters/PH's earn every freaking last Rand they put in their pocket. I don't care whether it's Chris charging $400 for a daily rate or Pieter charging $250/day and compensating for the difference with his biltong business. And either way, for these guys to be in business they must not only be making money, they must be making enough to warrant the immense amount of work it takes to run a safari business.
Furthermore, assuming a reputable outfit, whether it be the most expensive outfitter or the cheapest, an RSA PG hunt is still by far the biggest bang for the buck a hunter can get for his dollar.
