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HARVEY WORLD TRAVEL celebrates two decades in South Africa

A note from head office

BACK in 1997, an international business delegation landed in South Africa with the aim of opening up a Harvey World Travel franchise. At that stage, HWT had been in operation for over 40 years, having started as an Australian familyowned business in 1951. Presentations were held around the country. The opportunity to join a leading international travel brand generated much excitement in the trade. BidTravel bought 50% of the franchisor and the very first store opened its doors to the public in Groenkloof on March 1, 1998. In 2015 BidTravel purchased the remaining 50% and now owns 100% of Harvey World Travel South Africa. As part of this group, which has significant market share in the SA travel sector, we ensure unparalleled negotiating power with all travel suppliers. Twenty years later, HWT is one of South Africa’s most well established retail travel brands, boasting the most geographically expansive network in Southern Africa with over 70 agencies located in South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana and Zimbabwe. Each one of our franchises is staffed with an efficient team of expert travel consultants waiting to send the public to their dream destinations. We also pride ourselves on being some of our preferred suppliers’ top supporters. Our network services both leisure and corporate, with an approximate split of 70/30 in favour of corporate travel. Our broad product range ensures that we can personalise travel experiences, whether for a tailor-made holiday or a high-pressure business trip. Our agents have access to a wide variety of training and skills development, which is a key focus area in order for them to remain a step ahead. Our head office offers operational assistance with brand management, marketing, lead generation, and IT tools and support. We attribute the longstanding relationships we have with our franchisees to the unchanging core values of our brand – that is transparency, honesty and good, old-fashioned ethical business practice, which HWT head office and agencies have embodied for the past two decades. We also do our utmost to keep with the times, changing our outlook, services and products as needed. We have many plans and goals for the future, a number of which will be launched later this year, so watch this space... .

The story behind the Harvey’s

Karin van der Kaay Owner of Harvey World Travel Groenkloof

“I started out in travel with SAA in the late Sixties before moving into retail travel and progressing through the ranks at various agencies. I was managing a Pretoria-based agency when the Harvey delegation arrived in South Africa. At the presentation I was inspired by the prospect of starting my own agency and so I signed up,” says Karin. Harvey World Travel Groenkloof was the first franchise to open in South Africa and Karin quips that one of the benefits of being the pioneer was that they furnished her entire office. Karin says that, from the outside, one consortium may seem very similar to another. The benefit of being part of the HWT group is that all outlets are ownermanaged. “This really adds something to the mix in the form of commitment to both the business and its public,” she says. “It has been so personally fulfilling to open and run my own business. People ask me when I am going to retire and I always say: ‘death or lotto – whichever comes first’,” Karin jokes.

Brigitte Gonggryp Owner of Harvey World Travel Highway

Chairwoman of the Harvey World Travel Franchise Advisory Council (FAC), Brigitte Gonggryp joined the group 17 years ago. “I was running about five other businesses when I heard that Harvey World Travel Kloof and Hillcrest was for sale. I bought in with partners and over the years it became clear that this was the business to focus on and I remained in the travel game.” Brigitte has always been passionate about travel, having visiting over 60 countries in her lifetime. She feels that it is important, as an agent, to be able to speak with authenticity about the destinations you are selling. She adds that her staff were the foundation of her business as she relied on them for consulting, as she had no prior experience in the industry. Most of her staff have been with her for the full duration of her time as an HWT agency. Over the years the agency grew, winning the ‘Harvey Office of the Year’ twice, once in 2008 and again in 2012. “It was also a great honour to be selected by Club Med as the launch agency for its new Club Med ‘shop within a shop’ concept two years ago,” she says.

Craig Cowgill Owner of Harvey World Travel Randburg

20 years ago Craig attended the Australian delegation’s presentation in South Africa and says he found it very impressive. He was running an agency which was registered with another consortium at the time but decided to switch across to Harvey, attracted by the international brand. Craig says he has never looked back.  “The group offers us great value for money, and the support head office offers is a particular benefit. We love the balance of being able to make use of excellent preferred supplier negotiated rates, while also enjoying the freedom to maintain an independently owned and operated business,” he says. 

Alan and Jackie Viljoen Harvey World Travel Centurion 

In 1998, Jackie Viljoen was working 12-hour days as a travel consultant. Hearing through the grapevine about the HWT delegation that were signing up franchisees in South Africa, Jackie and her husband, Alan, set up an interview, prepared a business plan and soon afterwards found themselves opening their own franchise in Centurion. The business grew, and when the couple decided to open a second travel office, Alan joined the business full time, overseeing the marketing and accounting functions of the businesses. Twenty years later, Jackie and Alan’s office ranks as one of Harvey’s top 10 agencies, and their 2015/16 Harvey Office of the year award is a matter of much pride. “Looking after our staff has been the reason for our success. We wouldn’t be in the position we are in today without them. Our entire team, except one relative newbie, has been with us for nine or more years,” says Alan. Over the last two decades the industry has changed so much, but throughout this time we have had the continuous back-up of head office. They are reliable and approachable, and the support structure works well as they still allow us the flexibility to be our own bosses and to run the business as we see fit,” he says.

Mahesh Clover Owner of Harvey World Travel Gaborone

In the early nineties, Mahesh heard about a travel agency in Botswana that was up for sale. He investigated but when the deal didn’t work out he ended up starting his own agency called ‘The Travel Centre’. The Harvey delegation visited Botswana at about the time when independent agencies were starting to align with consortiums, as airlines and suppliers were cutting back on direct deals. “It was definitely beneficial to be part of an international brand, and also to have BidTravel’s buying power behind us. Head office took on all the preferred partner negotiations on our behalf and we were able to generate extra revenue from introducing a leisure department right at the time when commissions were cut. It was also great to be able to attend the HWT conferences, which were held in different cities around Australia and New Zealand. I learned so much from the international exposure,” he says.

Zakira Osman Branch Manager of Harvey World Travel Springfield

In 1992 founder Yunoos Osman, bought Marathon Travel, an existing agency in Springfield that specialised in sports travel. He remembers it being a great time to be a part of travel, with a lot of support from airlines and suppliers, and the opportunity to interact personally with clients. Over the years, the agency diversified into leisure and corporate markets and became the leading travel agency in the country for pilgrimage tours to the Middle East. In the late Nineties they were the first agency to charter a 267 EgyptAir aircraft from Durban to Jeddah for pilgrims. This market continued to grow, with their charter expanding to a 400-seat jumbo, picking up 200 pilgrims in Durban and 200 in Johannesburg the following year.

Jay and Misha Bhula Owner Managers of Harvey World Travel Fordsburg

Harvey World Travel Fordsburg, as it is known today, was founded by KL Modi more than 40 years ago and is one of the oldest travel agencies still in operation in South Africa today. Mr Modi studied law with George Bizos but, due to apartheid restrictions, found it difficult to practise and turned to travel instead. He retired a year ago at the age of 86. His daughter and son-in-law, Jay and Misha, have now taken over managing the agency. “We have remained a small agency, keeping things manageable and building up our reputation through the years by trying to operate ethically at all times, says Jay. “We joined Harvey 20 years ago to take advantage of their international reputation and to pool our resources with other agents in order to negotiate better rates with our suppliers. Over the years, head office has provided a backbone of support, great service and good deals, which have helped us to flourish,” says Jay.

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Why Lee Harvey Oswald Fled to the Soviet Union

The years Kennedy's assassin spent in Minsk only deepened his isolation, biographer Peter Savodnik says.

T o mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, a wave of books has been published in the United States covering everything from  Kennedy’s legacy to alleged new details about his death . One new title examines the Soviet chapter of the life of Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who shot Kennedy. Oswald defected to the Soviet Union in 1959 and spent two and a half years living in Minsk before he grew tired of the adventure and returned home. In The Interloper: Lee Harvey Oswald Inside the Soviet Union , Peter Savodnik looks at why Oswald fled America, his life in Minsk, and what ultimately led him to climb to the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas and aim a rifle at Kennedy’s head on November 22, 1963. An interview with the author follows:

You write that Lee Harvey Oswald's decision to defect to the USSR was part of an unhappy pattern that existed throughout his entire life and was established by his mother.

Peter Savodnik:  Before joining the Marines [at the age of 17] and leaving home, Oswald moved 20 times with his mother. And each move was precipitated by some failure on her part—a failed relationship, a lost job, or some rupture or crisis. The point is that Oswald never has, throughout his childhood or adolescence, anything akin to a home, a sense of rootedness. And if you view the Soviet foray through this prism, then it becomes pretty clear pretty quickly that the whole point of going there—even if Oswald wasn't aware of it—was to find some sense of permanence, a place to call home.

Why the USSR? What did he see in that country and what did he hope to do once he got there?

I think that the initial appeal [for him] came through communism, or Marxism, with its very violent and bellicose language and its appeals to overturning established wisdoms or powers. And that certainly [played] into—or fueled or comported with—Oswald's anger and sense of dislocation.

And then, of course, it was only a very small half-step to get to the Soviet Union, to get to this place that kind of embodied all the kind of Marxist revolution [ideas] that he had been hearing about and reading about.

And what made this, of course, more alluring from Oswald's point of view was that no country represented the total refutation of America and of everything he came from as much as the Soviet Union [did].

Oswald was in Moscow when he asked for Soviet citizenship. Why did the authorities ship him off to Minsk, 675 kilometers away?

The most important thing from the KGB's vantage point was that Oswald be far away from anyone or anything important. So they just wanted him somewhere sleepy and boring and quiet. And that's why almost all the other American defectors were also sent to provincial cities. In the case of almost everyone else, they were sent to Ukraine. In the case of Oswald, he was sent to Minsk. I don't think we should read too much into going to Ukraine versus going to Belarus. I think the more important point is that, in all these cases, defectors were sent somewhere far from the capital.

Oswald's life in Minsk begins well enough, but he eventually becomes unhappy. What made him lose his enthusiasm for Soviet life?

The most important change that takes place over the course of Oswald's two and a half years in Minsk is, from the very beginning, this sort of waning celebrity. The first six months or so, he's a celebrity. He's this oddity, he's "the American in Minsk." But over time, that begins to fade. People become accustomed to him, they no longer regard him as all that special or important. And as his novelty begins to fade, his interest in this place begins to fade. So that's the first thing.

The second thing is that the routine of Minsk would have been amazingly tedious and slow moving. Minsk is a very, very communist-[style city.] It was leveled during the war, and after the war it was re-made with a Stalinist vision. So the first thing that one notices in Minsk is the absence of stuff—the absence of clutter and all the kind of urban detritus that one finds in big cities in countries like the United States. What Minsk felt like was quiet, simple, pared down, and there was an absence of things to do and experience. So there was the tedium, the boredom.

The Soviet Union was supposed to put an end to all this constant … [wandering] or moving that courses through his childhood and adolescence. And of course the Soviet chapter is a failure; instead of creating a new life for himself that is going to take him in a different direction permanently, he lasts about two and a half years and then he gets sick of it and gets out. So in some sense, Oswald, I think, was keenly aware when he came back to the United States that he had failed, and that his great ambition to find permanence had been derailed.

Describe the mental state of the now 24-year-old Oswald after he arrives back in the United States. How does he end up in the Texas School Book Depository with a rifle?

The rest of Oswald's life, the last 17 months of his life, fit neatly into the bigger pattern of his life. He resumed his [wandering]—once he's back in the United States, he's jumping around, moving manically, hoping very much to find somewhere that will rescue him from his psychology, from his plight, and, of course, he keeps failing and failing, and the pressure keeps building and he finally succumbs to this mounting violence in his mind and discovers the president is coming to Dallas, and kills him. The details of the assassination itself have been discussed, as you know, at great length many, many, many, times. What is much more interesting than any of the particulars is the psychology leading up to the assassination.

Is Oswald a misunderstood figure in U.S. history? Do people see him as something that he wasn't, or vice versa?

I think that there's a real dearth of discussion of Oswald because he is constantly thought of—we have insisted on thinking of him—as a cog in someone else's detective story. So he's always portrayed in this kind of amorphous, one-dimensional light, this very shadowy light. We never really know Oswald, I think, because we insist on not knowing him. We like the idea of him as a mystery. But when one looks much more closely at the mystery, one realizes that, in fact, it's much less mysterious than we might have thought. Oswald was very complicated. He had many demons preying on him but he could be understood, like all people. And when you play close attention to the Soviet period, when you examine that, a lot of these complexities are laid bare.

This post appears courtesy of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty .

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