Personalized guest experience

Personalization is a concept that lies at the very heart of the travel industry: the art of making people feel at home.

The key to successfully personalizing the guest experience is to know your customers, thanks to technology all is changing.

For most of the human population, meeting their personal needs are quite a satisfaction. It’s nice to know that when you visit places and you overnight that they meet your personal needs. It is always said that at the end of a relaxed holiday and you are back home there is nothing better than sleeping in your own bed.

How nice will it be that while you’re on vacation or maybe just on a weekend break, it really feels like home, just with a little bit more flair.  As a typically Karoo person, we love long, good and interesting conversations, delicious food and a good night’s rest.

After all, kindness and good stories alongside the campfire doesn’t cost much.

Every experience that you take on must ensure pure excitement at the end of the day. So that one day all of these extraordinary stories may be told next to the campfire of Karreekloof for the young ones to hear.

It sure is nice to have peace of mind, that when you check in at a certain place and the people receiving you know exactly who you are, where you come from and what your likes and dislikes are.

Here at Karreekloof, we love the taste of good food, we laugh often and we enjoy sitting next to the campfire. You can be assured of a good night’s rest and plenty enough fresh air.

Come and relax with us, lick your fingers clean after a good meal and enjoy the campfire stories.

OSTRICH NECK CASSEROLE

Ostrich neck is an excellent alternative to oxtail, as it is similar in appearance when cooked, but with no fat!

With its combination of great taste and nutrition, and it’s incredible ease and versatility in cooking, ostrich meat has rapidly found its’ way onto the menu of many of the finest restaurants in the world. It will make you keep running back for more.

Ingredients:

100ml cooking oil

2kg ostrich neck, cleaned and cut up

2 large carrots, peeled and sliced

2 large onions, diced

1 bunch celery, sliced (no leaves)

3 large potatoes, peeled and cubed

Sprig fresh rosemary

3 cloves garlic, crushed

4 bay leaves

4T tomato paste

1/2 bottle good red wine

6 to 8 cups water

Salt and pepper to taste

1x410g can butterbeans, drained

Method:

In a large sturdy pot heat the oil until very hot and seal the meat until browned all over, about 8 to 10 minutes. Add the carrots, onions, celery, rosemary, garlic and bay leaves. Braise the vegetables until they are glazed about 5 minutes. Add the tomato paste and stir in. Add the red wine and bring to the boil. Add the water, cover the pot, turn down the heat to a simmer and cook for about one hour or until the neck is nearly cooked. Season with salt and pepper. Add the potatoes and cook for a further 30 minutes or until tender. Add the butterbeans and heat through. Serve with yellow rice.

Ostrich Meat – Savory and Delicious!

LIFE IS ALWAYS SWEETER WITH GOOD FOOD

Let’s face it, food is a part of our everyday lives. We eat it, we dream about it and we spend our money on it.

There are two impulses we need to figure out how to short-circuit. The first is “habituation,” which has to do with the way we get tired of even our favorite foods if we eat them too often, and the second is “satiation,” which leads us to enjoy a given food less and less over the course of a serving.

One thing when cooking for other people is that the food should taste good, of course, but it doesn’t have to be complicated, expensive, or time-consuming.  Nothing beats good food and great company.

LOVE PEOPLE, COOK THEM GOOD FOOD

There is no bigger pleasure in life than to meet new people and eat some lovely food.  Explore new destinations, eat some amazingly delicious food.  Food is the one mediums that binds people together and helps you learn and know about people and their cultures.

Choosing a variety of foods will help to make your meals interesting.

Here are some tips:

  1. Food is a great go-to for expressing your feelings.
  2. Food is rewarding.
  3. Going to get food makes for a great first date.
  4. Food completes family holidays.
  5. You can make and eat food any way you want to.
  6. One bite of your favorite food on a bad day can instantly change your mood.
  7. The right food can fulfill a day’s worth of cravings.
  8. Food is fast and easy.
  9. At the end of the day, you’ll realize that food is all you need.
Food is there for the highs and the lows, food is love, food is life.

Comfort in the Upper Karoo

Driving for hours and hours is not easy. Especially when you arrive at your first destination and the accommodation is not up to standard at all. That’s when you realize that looks can be deceiving.

Any tired person just wants to feel comfortable when it comes to a good night’s rest. Even in far of places, it should feel as if you are sleeping in your own bed. Comfortable accommodation is the most important part at the end of the day.

The Karoo is not small, driving long distances, have fun, relax and at the end of the day, choose comfort. The bed you lay your head upon must take you away in the pursuit of relaxation. Take on the new day fresh and full of courage.

On the 35km dirt road on top of a hill, just before it feels like you have reached Kairo, you will discover Karreekloof. The small paradise with its white walls, renewed with brush and paint lay long days of relaxation and good accommodation.

Choosing the right Accommodation is always a trying task, and with the huge number of promotions, deals, and programs out there, it can be downright overwhelming.

Since every traveler has different needs when searching for accommodation, you’ll need to ask yourself what’s most important to you. Whether you’re looking for a great deal, a great location or a great B&B.

When people travel for any reason, their basic needs are the same: a clean room and comfortable bed in which to sleep, confidence in the safety of their accommodations, and helpful, friendly front desk staff.

Come and enjoy a comfortable sleepover with us here at Karreekloof.

Look after your staff and they’ll take care of the rest

Engaging employees involves a number of approaches, including trust, autonomy, receptiveness to ideas, communication, leadership and credit for good work.

While some of these elements may feel a little nebulous and hard to instill in an organization, there shouldn’t be anything difficult about recognizing and rewarding work well done.

Rewards don’t have to be lavish to be effective. Verbal recognition was cited widely by workers as one of the ways employers could show they cared about their staff.

Worse still, other research has found that more than four in five managers have stolen their colleagues’ ideas and passed them off as their own – hardly a practice geared to raising engagement.

Take Care of What’s Important: Look after your staff

Any business can get on the road to solving engagement issues. Look after your staff and they’ll look after everything else.

Your employees are right at the heart of your business. Without them, it’s pretty likely that the entire thing would fall apart. Of course, you are the head, the leader showing them the way, but they are the ones who are able to turn your decisions into action.

Employees who aren’t cared for and respected often find themselves becoming disenchanted with their roles and often come to dislike and resent the work that they are doing. Luckily, it’s not that difficult to look after your employees.

Employees always put in their best work when they feel that their work is valued.

If you shut yourself away and isolate yourself from them, employees are going to feel a genuine disconnect between you and, by extension, the business. Instead, make sure that they all know that you are open to listening to any suggestions and issues that they might have.

Not only will this create an environment of trust but it could actually improve the business as a whole. You might be able to see the big picture, but your employees can get a much closer idea of what’s happening on the ground level. By listening to them, you’ll be able to get some valuable insight into the day to day functions of your business.

Tell them that they are valued

You should always value your employees; they are your most precious resource. Make sure that when recognition is due to an excellent job, you show them that. If an employee feels valued then they are far more likely to go above and beyond the call of duty in order to make the business as successful as possible.

 

Karreekloof a Unique Game Lodge

What makes Karreekloof so unique? A place rich in so much history late evening stories around the campfire already play a major role in shaping the piece of earth.

With its wide plains, windmills that are continuously turning around with every day’s mercy. Animals that each find a unique piece of the field to multiply their survival. Plants that can still display their beautiful side through heavy days.

One of the most beautiful characteristics of Karreekloof is the unique ‘witgatboom’. These trees grow in dry areas. The Latin name is Boscia Albitrunca and if I translate the Afrikaans name, ‘witgatboom’, to English, it literally means a tree with a white bottom:) A good name for these trees, as their trunks are white, of course. What makes them so beautiful, are their trunks that bend and turn and have the nicest forms, picture perfect.

With the white walls from home to storage each with their own characteristics and rounded new ‘facelift’, you can get ‘lost’ in thoughts drinking an early cup of coffee on the porch watching the steam slowly evaporating from the cup into thin air. Appreciate the silence without any noise in your ears, breathe in fresh air and just blast away from your everyday work.

Every place on earth is unique in its own way, every human being is different. Not all animals and plants have the same characteristics. People can make decisions and choose where the wheels of their cars should turn. May the unique Karreekloof ‘village’, as we call it, take your breath away when driving your car wheels through our gates.

“I hope you spend your days but they all add up and when that sun goes down, hope you raise your cup.”

Food lovers

Potjiekos (“Small pot of food”) originated with the Voortrekkers, evolving as a stew made of venison and vegetables cooked in the potjie.

Traditionally, the recipe includes meat, vegetables, and potatoes all slow-cooked with various spices. Traditionally, the liquid should never be added to the pot and the contents should never be stirred, as the lid keeps all liquids and flavors circulating throughout cooking. Usually served with rice or “mielie pap”.

LAMB CURRY POTIJIE

Lamb curry potjie is a real favorite of most South Africans! Especially in the winter time and when you want to entertain large crowds without having to spend hours in the kitchen. The recipe serves six.

750g x 2 cubed lamb ( you can use half beef and half lamb, but it is nicer if you use only lamb)

4-5 sweet potatoes peeled and cut in large chunks

1 ½ teaspoons ground cumin

1 ½ teaspoons ground coriander seed

1 teaspoon chili jam

2 teaspoons garam masala

1cm ginger peeled and grated

6 garlic cloves crushed

2 bay leaves

1/4 ground turmeric

1 tablespoon oil

2 onions chopped

800g tin peeled tomatoes

Liquidize the tin peeled tomatoes in the food processor. Fry the onions in the oil remove the onions. Use the same pot to dry fry the herbs and spices for a moment. Add the onions and the liquidized tomatoes. Add the meat bring to boil. Cook for 1 hour on the stove top with the lid on the pot. If too dry you can add half a cup of water. Add sweet potatoes cook for another hour or till sweet potatoes are tender. The sweet potato thickens the sauce. Eat and enjoy. The mild curry freezes well.

A Karoo road trip is one of the best ways to travel the vast expanse

THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO DO A KAROO ROAD TRIP

Route 62, the world’s longest wine route that winds through the Klein Karoo, or the upper Karoo sparsely populated plains southwest of Kimberley.

“Its particular rare mix of rugged mountains, vast open spaces, idiosyncratic little towns, star-studded skies devoid of light pollution, sheep farms, and back of beyond windmills make it road trip country like nowhere else in the world.”

No matter what Karoo road trip you choose, here are a series of great places to stop

Kimberley

The surprisingly interesting town and site of South Africa’s Big Hole, Kimberley might have begun as a diamond rush town but today its wide streets are lined with Victorian mansions, museums, galleries, gardens, battlefields and ghost routes aplenty.

Victoria West

Its name might hale from the Victorian era, but the only thing Victorian about the town today is its charming architecture, which survived both the effects of a disastrous flood in 1871 and the deluge of wagons en route between Cape Town and the diamond rush town of Hopetown, during the late 1880s. Today it’s a typical Karoo dorpie with plenty of accommodation and good antique shops.

The Karoo, a area of little rainfall, blue and cloudless skies, and extreme temperatures may have acted as a barrier to the interior from Cape Town for early settlers, but today it has come out of isolation to become a major tourist attraction – its immense spaces, incredible mountains, idiosyncratic towns and promise of escape the reason for its popularity.