Concordia
Merchant Taylors’ School
BarrieGotch
(1995-2000) was about to open a nightclub in London before a chance trip to
Uganda sawhim take a very different path. Hewrites of the challenges of setting upwhat is
nowan award-winning luxury safari lodge
Adve ture
An
African
you find in zoos are lowland gorillas which
are slightly smaller, have less fur and are
more adaptable to survive in captivity.
I had now completed the final leg
of our trip and having always been an
entrepreneurial type, I immediately saw an
opportunity. All the hotels I had stayed at in
Uganda were charging 5-6* prices but only
providing 2-3* levels of accommodation
and service. Why was this? All of them were
very busy so I had to explore this further.
After chatting with the agent who invited
us, and hearing her confirmmy suspicions,
I decided to take up the challenge.
After returning to the UK, I did extensive
research, was told by numerous people that
I must be completely mad, put together
a business plan and went out to find
investors. My father immediately agreed
to put in a percentage of the capital and
another one of the investors was Robert
Fishman, an OMT from the same year
group as me who is currently an Assistant
Director in Deloitte Restructuring Services.
After 3-4 months of various challenges I
had found all the investors I required and
was ready to begin the journey which would
consume the next five years of my life.
Robert and I initially travelled back to
Uganda in order to find the perfect piece
of land. We found a plot opposite the forest
that had taken our breath away which
was home to a stunning 800/900 year old
mahogany tree that could be seen for miles
around, a river, a freshwater spring and
the added bonus that it was visited by the
gorillas every couple of weeks. Now the fun
part – how could we buy this land?
In Uganda it is very rare to find land with
title deeds. Living there was a family who
had been self-sufficient, living in mud huts
for generations. To buy the land we were
informed that every family member would
have to agree. Each member had different
prices, some of which went into the
thousands of dollars. I had been made well
aware that the prices we would be offered
as westerners would be significantly higher.
This was my first big mistake – negotiating
myself and not using a local. We finally
agreed a price after a year of negotiation
and being let down constantly. I think we
single-handedly boosted land prices in the
area by 1000% and I realised I was going to
have to learn very fast how to do business
in Uganda.
I found a builder/architect in Uganda
and sat with him, explaining all my ideas
and concepts. He came to see the land and
his first comment was “This is going to be
tough and you will need more land”. Ouch!
Anyway, after a further two years of land
purchases, negotiations, and planning we
were finally ready to build.
I could write a book on the challenges
of building and then running a business
in Uganda but the four biggest challenges
in getting the lodge built and then up and
running were:
• The remoteness of the land. Bwindi
is 15 hours away by car from Entebbe
International airport. 7 hours of that
y father, Len, owns a
corporate travel company called
Uniglobe Total Travel and back in 2006
he was invited to Uganda in order to
see the country and all it has to offer.
I was a regional manager for a chain
of nightclubs in Leeds at the time and
was making plans to move back to
London permanently and possibly open
a nightclub of my own for which I had
already put together a comprehensive
business plan and found backers in
Leeds. My father asked if I would like
to join him on the trip to Uganda. My
life would never be the same.
I found Uganda to be stunningly
beautiful and the greenest place I had
ever been – quite in keeping withWinston
Churchill’s description of it as ‘The Pearl of
Africa’. I travelled throughout the country
doing chimpanzee tracking, big five safaris,
boat safaris on Lake Victoria (the source
of the Nile) and finally the main attraction
– gorilla tracking in Bwindi Impenetrable
Forest. You trek through the forest with
guides and a group of up to eight tourists
until you come face to face with a group of
gorillas. On meeting these magical beasts,
you spend one hour watching them and
even interacting with them if they choose
to come up and say hello. Watching the
gorillas in their natural environment is an
experience which cannot be put into words.
There are no mountain gorillas in captivity
as they don’t survive, the only gorillas that
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