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Siphiwe Ngcobo, the owner and boss man of the iLawu Hospitality Group, could easily pass as one of the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands hotel and guesthouse chain’s more than 100 full-time employees.
Ngcobo (36) is dressed the same as the front-of-house staff at the iLawu Inn, the group’s three-star hotel in the Pietermaritzburg central business district.
He’s wearing a golf shirt with the company logo, and chinos. There’s no suit and tie, no assistant in tow.
Ngcobo is not much older than most of his youthful team, or the 40-odd hospitality industry trainees iLawu takes on every year for experiential training at its five hotels and guesthouses, and in its catering and events divisions.
An Italian-trained mechanical engineer, Ngcobo started his hospitality career in 2009 when he bought an eight-bedroom bed and breakfast establishment in the Pietermaritzburg suburb of Scottsville after selling several residential plots.
Ngcobo, who has been running small businesses since his student days, had bought the land with a payout he received from Hulamin, where he had worked as an engineer and moonlighted with a tuck shop operating out of a shipping container.
“I was living in my grandmother’s garage and didn’t have expenses. There were vacant sites in the area and I decided to buy them to invest in property, and to have the joy of holding a title deed in my hand.
“A developer approached me wanting to buy the land and I agreed. I used the money to buy a house in Scottsville to turn into a bed and breakfast.”
Inspired by the level of service he had received in the hospitality industry in Italy as a student, Ngcobo’s plan was to provide local accommodation at an international standard and to take up the challenge of entering an industry which was largely untransformed.
“I saw the need for a quality service with value for money in Pietermaritzburg, the idea of providing 24 hours reception, Wi-Fi, the sort of things you don’t find in the local bed and breakfast and guesthouse market.”
Ngcobo, who was blacklisted after losing his job, says his first foray into the market was difficult. The red tape of the commercial banks and state development institutions such as the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) hampers new operators, he says.
“I found that institutions which claimed to be assisting black entrepreneurs through development finance had so much red tape attached to their processes that they end up failing to help the people they need to help.”
At first Ngcobo pitched in as “cleaner, night clerk, cook and receptionist”, and he slept in his car on the nights when his eight rooms were occupied.
“When there were vacancies, I would sleep in one of the guest rooms and then be up before everybody else to get things ready for them. When the place was full, I would sleep in the car, freshen up and get ready for them. Those were tough days.”
Since then, the group has grown at a dramatic rate.
iLawu now owns a 20-room boutique hotel in Prestbury, the Ilawu Inn, a 21-room luxury guest lodge in Newcastle and another property nearby that is being funded through a R4.5 million loan from the IDC.
iLawu also runs an events and catering division that provides catering for private sector companies and government departments alongside parties, weddings and other functions.
Ngcobo is massively vigilant about iLawu’s brand.
“We pay a lot of attention to maintaining our image and to getting ourselves out there. We have reworked our logo, I think six times, to refine it to where we want it.
“We ensure that there is that visibility, that there is guest feedback. We’re constantly refining our systems, testing what works and what doesn’t work.”
The Pietermaritzburg-born entrepreneur and his team are constantly researching the market, travelling abroad to compare service standards and attending industry conferences to stay up to date with new technology, trends and developments in the industry.
“We would rather spend money on research and ensure that when we invest, it pays off.
“Before we started in Newcastle, I would travel there and stay over to get a feel of the place and find out who the travellers were and what it was they were looking for.”
Ngcobo and some of his managers have recently returned from Spain, where they “had a holiday while studying the industry”.
He believes that iLawu will continue to grow. And later this year, his management team is heading for Zanzibar, where they will develop the group’s strategic plan for 2020.
