Visama Lodge via Monmanee Lodge - Testing the Model of a Future Legend!
The Visama Lodges are tented camps with what promised to be in line with the meaning of Visama ( to journey ) and its mantra of Developing Asia, Unrivaled Hospitality – a luxury tented camp brand where guests have the option to work through a trail of experiences in remote lesser known parts of Asia.
To this end together with CEO & Founder Willem Niemeijer and CFO & Founder Mark Remjian of the Visama Hospitality Group we set out to create a model camp to test some of our ideas in a remote area near Bo Kluea in Nan Province. Here we built a small camp to test our new South African made Safari tents in Asian tropical conditions. They have stood up well and enabled us to refine many of our ideas are workable for the future development of camps to be developed in Indonesia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Myanmar and Vietnam.
The camp also tested the restaurant with great local cuisine and with four tents has served as test bed for future development of ideas. Notably the Monmanee Lodge now operates successfully in its own right.
Key takeaways from this endeavor were :
Tent design to cover entire area – the open bathrooms were nice but did not work in this varied climatic condition.
FF&E and OS&E – equipment testing to eliminate what did and what didn’t work.
Presentation and selling of local product.
Creation of unique service delivery methods
Lighting
Health life and safety with a focus on crisis management in multiple situations due to remote location of tented camps.
In keeping with a world that needs to become increasingly sustainable we will be localizing 90%+ of menu items, growing as much as possible on site and developing strong village relations to support the enterprise and vice-versa.
