By Alyssia Birjalal
Durban - Showing off the good, the bad and the ugly to local and international tourists is what Street Scene is all about. Alyssia Birjalal chatted to partner, Jonas Barausse.
Tell us about the conception of Street Scene?
My business partner at the time had some free time after he’d come back from sailing abroad. He wanted some downtime and went to the Durban Tourism offices because he wanted to explore Durban as a tourist to basically rediscover the city.
He was really disheartened by the way Durban was being put across. It all seemed substandard and not something that would motivate anyone to want to know the city. There was a lot that wasn’t being shown.
It never started off as a business. It was just a thought that “well surely this could be done better”, and it was more about making a point rather than making a business. So we wanted to showcase the Durban we love, and we have been doing it ever since.
Why did you feel there was a need for this kind of business?
At the time we felt that Durbanites were their own worst enemies. Not only were we portraying our city to tourists in a bland way but we ourselves as residents were the biggest nay sayers.
So we said we wanted more positive story tellers in our city, otherwise we were never going to change. We are big thinkers. We do want change, but we also know that we can’t do it by ourselves, so our initial plan was to get mostly Durbanites on our tours – then we would have more people to help spread the message about the city.
A photo posted by StreetScene031 (@streetscene031) on Dec 9, 2015 at 3:07am PST
And this worked beautifully. If you can knock the socks off a Durbanite who has lived in the city for 50 years, then you have something you can show anyone.
So when international tourists started to hear about us through word of mouth, they came on the tours and were losing their minds about it. We were getting feedback that we did not anticipate.
What are your thoughts on South Africa as a tourism destination – why do you think that it’s important to show off our country?
With no “ifs and buts” we undoubtedly live in one of the most diverse countries in the world.
From exploring the ecosystems to wildlife and the cities themselves – Durban, Joburg and Cape Town, let alone the smaller cities – have a lot of cultural and historical significance.
We have people who have come through here who have influenced the world, Durban especially. I think that tourism is an easily accessible form of revenue for a country to focus on.
A lot has been driven towards wildlife as that is the vast majority of our international tourism. People want to come and see our beautiful national parks.
How has Street Scene grown?
We are still a very small company which has always been important to us. We have wanted to stay owner-run because no one is going to run your business or look after it the way you will.
Being owner-run, we have that level of personalisation and attention to detail. We started with three people with backpacks and a shared notebook, working from one of our flats. And at the beginning we paid ourselves weekly, because the company couldn’t afford to pay us in one chunk at the end of the month.
At the beginning we used to spend hours and hours of our day just exploring, and Fridays we used to eat bunny chows. So now we actually know some really cool bunny chow places, but that was by default.
We’ve grown really slowly, making sure the business is maintainable. Today, Street Scene has two partners, three permanent employees and five part-time employees.
We also run tours to Joburg and Cape Town and we have sister companies to assist us, so that’s how we get footprints on the ground in those cities.
Some of our Office Graff at #StreetScene HQ done by the talented @ewokessay
A photo posted by Jonas Barausse (@mynamesjonas) on Apr 16, 2013 at 7:05am PDT
Is this the way of exploring a new trend?
I definitely think this is a new development. In the beginning we were pretty ignorant, we had the idea that we could do it better but none of us had the tourism background, so we studied our various specialties.
Now there is definitely a buzz around it. Having these behind the scenes experiences of township touring and knowing the place you’re showing people is more of a humbling experience.
How can people get in touch with you?
Visit our website www.streetscene.co.za or e-mail [email protected], or call 031 321 5079.
Sunday Tribune