Cover Report
Evergreen Venture Churns Out Profits
Owners have big plans for the future
The waterfall that is the source of prosperity for about 100 of the villagers at Mele, a 15-minute drive out of Port Vila, originates from a cave several kilometres inland.
It cascades picturesquely down a cliff on a 140-hectare property the villagers have titles to all year-round, and keeps the forest it flows through always green.
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The owners have run tours to it for more than 10 years. Since 1999 it has run on a serious commercial footing as Evergreen Ltd, set up partly under pressure from a government anxious to extract VAT revenue from tour sales. Led by Philip Malas, a former printing press operator, the company is reputedly now the most successful ni-Vanuatu-owned business in Vanuatu tourism.
Last year, says Malas, 36, a large, cheerful personality most likely to be found at his computer in the Evergreen office on Port Vila's main street, at the airport end of town, the Mele Cascades and Waterfall Tour, booked about 10,500 customers - about one fifth to one quarter of all Vanuatu's visitors.
Actually, says another tour operator, custom must have been far higher than that; maybe at least double given bookings from cruise ship day visitors of about 200 per ship.
Evergreen won a Vanuatu ecotourism award for 2002.
Malas left school early, his father unable to afford the cost of higher education managed for four older brothers and sisters, and became an apprentice printer.
He had a secure job with a local newspaper but a few years ago decided that his people's big asset, the cascade in a "very pleasant area" was something that the detailed attention he gave to printing jobs could be made far more fruitful.
Haphazard management is past. The customers want the assurance of an eco-acceptable toilet as well as cold drinks and safe transport from and to their hotel and, oh, bring mosquito repellent.
"We started small and we're growing," Malas says.
Evergreen now operates also in the inbound tour, meet and greet and outer island tour areas.
"We are developing our own people with training as knowledgeable guides, we run refresher course, we try to maintain standards for uniforms and we have product liability in place."
Evergreen is becoming a presence at Pacific and Asia Area Travel Association events in Australia and at the annual Fiji Bula Tourism Exchange It has sent the first few of its 30 employees off to Australia for training and in May the first is leaving for up to three months of hospitality and tour operator workshops.
Later this year 12 hands will go to Australia "to see how things work."
The company has a joint venture with an Australian developer for the residential subdivision of some of its land and is thinking about raising pigs and cattle and starting a cleaning business.
It's not easy running a business owned by 100 families," Malas says. "If you don't keep them behind you, can't move forward. I meet once a month with a board of directors. If they say no, it's no and if they say yes, it's yes." "My brother, who is a customs officer, is also our financial controller. I have to argue with him to spend anything over 50,000 vatu."
Evergreen has a promotion and advertising budget for this year of 3.5 million Vatu.
One hundred and forty hectares of well watered land and forest so handy to Port Vila is quite a large asset.
"I'm thinking of a bird sanctuary as a future project," Malas says, "and a place where you can relax in an orchid garden. And there's all that fresh clean water from an underground spring. We could bottle it."
