Our business model has developed from initially purchasing a Cape Town holiday apartment in 1999. Too visually, the creation of the world’s most advanced property website in www.cape villas.com by 2003. By 2007, Cape Villas had a cash flow of $3 million and exclusive management of over 20 properties, in 2008 we created and a stylish magazine, to which BULGARI commented “We did not know you had such luxuries in Africa”. In 2009, we became the only private villas company situated in Africa to be recommended by Condé Nast Traveler and extended to 40 staff.

However, bigger is not always better, when it comes to exclusivity, how does one grow from a small niche company, into a larger company, without losing the exclusivity?

 

At first, we simply tried throwing money at the problem, having the hospitality department account for a quarter of turnover, but whilst it was not a bad experience, as they say in Germany, it was not a good film. Something was missing, there was a disconnect between the agent and the guest, caused by the ever growing hospitality department.

In 2011, Cape Villas founder and web architect decided to take a serious look at the problem, and concluded the problem was in the ownership structure of the business. Instead of a team of 40 with one owner, it was considered that we make more websites and sales and financial systems and break the team up into separate franchises. Now instead of working for a commission, each team works for themselves and pays 25% of revenue to the Franchise, which in this case is called Villa Secrets. And that’s what we have right here right now in Cape Town Luxury Villas, we are the 1st new franchise.

There were some detours on the way, including a book of applying string theory and supersymmetry to global economics, see www.AmericanButterfly.com. However, there was an awful lot of clever mathematics and computer science applied to our website, mathematics that worked as we now see Cape Town Luxury Villas.com on the first page of Google for over 400 search terms (see Marketing Reports). Indeed Cape Town Luxury Villas beats Cape Villas in nearly all categories, the prototype is a success and so is the business model, as we see the very incentivised owner pairing of Zenda Scholtz and Jenny Swienty giving it all they can and serving impeccably. And of course, all importantly, making bookings.