TOURISM & ECONOMIC GROWTH
By Milou Staub
Where sugar cane fields once ran almost unbroken to the edge of the Indian Ocean, a R2bn resort now stands.
The Club Med way
Having grown up in Mauritius, it’ s not new to me seeing a hotel rising from a former sugar-cane plantation. But I remember wondering, even then, why so many of those resorts relied heavily on foreign management when there was plenty of local talent available.
Club Med South Africa Beach & Safari opened on KZN’ s Dolphin Coast in July 2026 – at Tinley Manor, 60km north of Durban. This beach and bush combo, the first in the Club Med portfolio, boasts 486 rooms, an 18 000-hectare Big Five game reserve with its own safari lodge, and a 500-seat convention centre. Impressive, and it certainly looks good on paper. A development this size should, inevitably, create jobs, buy food and services, attracts visitors and raise the profile of an area. But does that automatically mean money flows into the surrounding economy?
Club Med is an all-inclusive resort. Guests pay upfront for accommodation, meals, drinks, activities, transfers, and in this case, safari experiences. The model is deliberately designed so that visitors can get almost everything they need without ever leaving the property. So what happens to the spending that never leaves the resort? Where is the economic“ leakage” that is perhaps one of the most important contributing factors to whether Club Med becomes a genuine regional economic engine or simply a very large, albeit impressive island within it?
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