This morning alone I glanced at dozens of emails from lodges and hotels offering the normally high end-of-the-year season for less than a third of its cost only a year ago!
In one remarkable case the super luxury company Sanctuary Retreats – one of my favorite vendors – offers December specials for a quarter of their former price!
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Wild animals and wildernesses are seriously endangered by the pandemic … not from disease, but from humans.
Poaching is increasing worldwide… not as in the past for black-market animals, but for food. Equally important communities worldwide are reducing their support for wildlife conservation, because wildlife authorities are ignoring the increasing human/wildlife conflict.
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For my African friends. Well… all my friends, and especially for those who live near Galena, Illinois.
Currently I don’t have potable water. Why I don’t have potable water reflects America today, dysfunctional and imploding. It’s sad and infuriating but for those of us who have lived much of our lives in places like Africa, it’s also very telling.
An entire industry has now arisen to recover funds for travelers who have lost deposits because of the pandemic. Like timeshares, ambulance chasers, J.G. Wentworth and scores of others, the more well-off who are pissed as hell that some of their vacation money might be forfeited, are now themselves preyed on by dubious advocates.
To some of us it’s a delight to see capitalism eating itself to death.
It will probably be three to four years before the effects of the virus stop impacting travelers to distant lands. Efficacy of the vaccines, mayhem in airline schedules, widely differing and radical airport rules for transfers and most importantly, the hugely damaged vendor communities are all just now being recognized as the travelers’ principle hurdles.
There’s little good evidence yet on the last three hurdles for a good prediction into 2021, although I venture some speculation below. On the vaccine issue, however, some things are coming into focus.
The virus has unmasked many of our lies and failed promises in terrible ways. It’s also revealed how inhumane much of tourism is.
The lack of upmarket safari business is seriously damaging conservation throughout sub-Saharan Africa, stripping away the feel-goodness of charity for what it really always was: a sales tool.
Forced into reflection by our virus winter, travelers are having second thoughts about what travel means to their lives.
A surprising transformation is occurring. Owning up to the fantasies of their trips and faced with a future economy that doesn’t look all that good cost is becoming more important than ever.
“White population(s) used political power and security forces to maintain slavery, segregation, racism, and marginalisation,” all over the world writes Abdi I Samatar in today’s South Africa Daily Maverick.
When the Black Lives Matter demonstrations took off the beginning of this month it wasn’t long before disruptive but peaceful protests occurred in Kenya and South Africa. While they have mostly died away, the buzz continues.
A refreshing optimism is leading to an unspeakable heartbreak.
The “opening up” of almost every part of the world irrespective of its virus case situation brings much hope to those out of work. This is most clear in my trade in Africa. “Out of work” is bad even for the car company executive, but on an individual level what may happen in Africa is exponentially more terrifying than here at home.
In a wildfire if you have the capability you dump the water on the largest blazes. When we get a vaccine will we direct the first doses to the worst outbreaks?
It’s daunting trying to predict where the worst outbreaks are now much less where they will be. Using Statista today the U.S., all of Europe and the U.K. are at the top of the list for deaths per capita, yet there is not a single African country, or Southeast Asian country in the top 50.
How can that be?
The carnage of African safari companies grows like a dry season wildfire. Distant Serengeti grasslands are lit with flames of desperation. The dead grasses fueling this destruction are the charities proffered to safari customers as a benefit of their bookings.
The charity these schemes achieved for years has stopped flat out: Anti-poaching units, schools, health dispensaries, food assistance and educational training are disappearing with a level of human suffering that the executives of the companies who concocted them ensured they would never experience themselves.
I’m betting that a vaccine will be ready by the first of the year and that Kenya, South Africa and a number of other sub-Saharan countries will require all travelers to prove they are vaccinated in order to gain entry.
But what will you find once you get in?
Lions hunt because they’re hungry, and I’ve often listened to excited clients posit why a pair of fit hunters just missed a take-down: They were “too desperate.” I smile wanly to myself. Wild animals’ every moment is one of desperation.
Never, though, has any lion displayed the level of desperation found today among African safari companies trying to survive this virus. We knew many wouldn’t make it. We didn’t know it would be suicide.
I can’t convince myself there will be a second wave. I can’t convince myself that a vaccine will be available the first of next year. I guess in fact I can’t convince myself of much. Except one thing: African tourism is imploding so severely that it will gut the global market for safaris for decades to come.
Half of the 2019 African tourism will not exist in a year. By the end of 2021 there will be an unprecedented transformation rolling back decades of trends. (More on this later this week.)
