The ending of the recession and its accompanying surge in bookings are redefining the American safari travel market. One important change: luxury camping is OUT!

Yesterday I discussed how the market will evaluate permanent lodging, but it’s with some sadness that I conclude the era of camping might be over in East Africa.

And it might not be, altogether. What I know is falling in interest as fast as a baboon plummeting out of his tree at sunrise is so-called “luxury camping.”

In the old days when we first started comfortable mobile tented camping, we took the whole camp and staff with us along the itinerary. It took the guys at least a day to break camp, move and reset it, and on that moving day we’d go to a lodge.

That was the camping I really enjoyed. These were large tents, spring beds with comfortable 2- or 3″ foam mattresses with a bit of linen to make them look good, detached long-drop (toilet) tents and detached (hot-bucket) shower tents. There was then a mess tent, and it usually took a staff of at least 8-10 to work a small camp, and the staff/client ratio was about 1:1.

The reason for these camps in the first place was because there wasn’t an alternative! One of my favorite places to camp was Naabi Hill in the Serengeti with its sweeping views of the migration plains. The nearest lodge was at Ndutu, 30k away.

We loved it so much, we ultimately destroyed it. We oversold camping. We referred to the “real Africa” and experiencing the veld “like the first explorers.”

Right. Brochures are instruments of exaggeration, and in this case, inversely so. It’s TODAY that the camps are like the early explorers. Today, “camps” have clawfoot iron bathtubs and cellar wines served in Waterford crystal.

Here’s what happened and why the new American market now rejects camping.

The cost of camping was on a par with staying at a lodge in the early 1980s, right after the second major recession since I started my career redefined American market interests in East Africa. So price in the beginning wasn’t an issue. You had a choice: be a wimp and stay at a lodge, or be adventuresome like you expected you’d have to be when you first started thinking about going on safari!

And it was, truly, adventuresome. Gerbils would scurry under the plastic floor all night long like little tumblers rolling through the ground; scorpions had to be dumped out of your shoes in the morning; elephant would knock trees’ seeds onto your tent in the middle of the night, and hippo would be crunching grass right outside your matted window.

I remember a wonderful guy, Richard Lattis, then the curator of herpetology at the Bronx Zoo (later the director) waking me up rudely in the middle of the night as he lunged out of his spring bed onto mine (and me!) to watch the hippo on my side eating the grass just outside the tent.

I remember my son, Brad, insisting he was old enough to leave the mess tent at dinner in the dark (at about 7 years old) to go back alone to his tent to visit the long-drop. He came back remarkably quickly with a white face, stoically silent, and a disposition unable to use the long-drop for several days subsequently.

I found leopard tracks around his long-drop!

Or my great friend, Gregg Painter, expert birder, wandering to the edge of camp while the rest of us slept off the morning heat in our cots after our game drive, rescued in the nick of time by my driver, Winston, as he pulled his Landrover in between Gregg and the lioness with her cubs!

Those were the days.

And it was particularly nice that the same staff, same tents, same outstanding food, traveled with you from place to place.

And it became more and more popular, because it should have been! So guess what, the price went up… on two fronts. First, the normal supply/demand curve pointed every price upwards, and second, the government began charging special fees for camping.

Then, as the price mounted parity was always in jeopardy. Those of us outfitting the camps started to scratch our noggins wondering, “What the hell are clients paying so much for, when down the street there’s a real bathroom?!” We were always worried that the price threshold wouldn’t hold.

And then in the mid 1990s, the competition got fierce. The main company in Nairobi that made canvas tents went bonkers. Canvas – most of it pulled up from South Africa – doubled in price from 1995 to 1999. That led to even higher pricing.

And by the early 2000s government fees for camping within a game park reached $100 per person per night.

And there were now more lodges and more permanent tented camps, but the market demand was still substantial. All inclinations to hold prices down disappeared.

By 2000 the net cost for a person camping including fees was just under $300 per night. That would translate into a retail market price of $500-700 per night. The mean retail price of a safari using a permanent lodge was around $350 and a permanent camp, around $400.

The disparity was now enormous. How’d that happen?

Market demand, I think. We were too good at promoting the “real Africa.” The fantasy of an African safari was most closely reflected in a camping program. We learned that many travelers were in search of this fantasy and like Space Mountain or Bourbon Street, we gave it to them!

The successful formula attracted lots of new investors. Suddenly the national parks were creating new “special campsites” all over the place. Sometimes, they were in sight of a lodge!

So to earn your customer’s business, “improvements” began. Like… flush toilets and solar lighting?

Whoa! Sir and Lady Burton never used flush toilets!

Flush toilets and solar lighting takes a while to set up. The idea of a moveable camp was gone. So was the idea that camp was set up just for your safari. The only way any of this made sense was to set up “camp” for 5-6 months in one place, so you could bury electrical cable, create either a complicated septic system or make arrangements to dispose of all waste regularly, hire staff for extended periods, and figure out a long-term supply strategy.

By the early 2000s, “camp” … wasn’t.

It was semi-permanent and unmovable. The giant tent interiors included four-poster beds with beautiful covers, arm chairs and armoires, separate attached chambers with flush toilets and big showers and a separate bathroom sink area. When you settled into your queen-sized bed at night under the draped mosquito netting, book lights could be switch on until you drifted off to sleep.

Pathways were demarcated with colored rocks and kerosene lanterns, flutes were played by appropriately dressed Maasai askaris and pork loin was served with Pinot Noir.

Animals wouldn’t dare come anywhere near the place, anymore, but that was OK.

Now, all of that isn’t so bad until…

It rained.

No matter how “semi-permanent” it all was, it wasn’t a lodge or permanent camp, and nature ruled. It was one thing in the old days when it rained and got muddy in front of your tent. You just took off your shoes and let down the flaps. Didn’t matter if a few drops of water or mud followed you inside.

But good grief, imagine what mud does to a white fluff comforter!

In the old days, if we saw the path’s water rising, we’d quickly move the tent! Not possible with these new monstrosities. You just watched slowly as the water seeped onto your floor drenching the sheep mats. And my, what water can do to an electrical system!

And then …

When the toilet often didn’t flush right… or when the bed lights didn’t turn on .. Or when the shower spigot fell onto you… or when you found carpenter ants in your Sealy Posturpedic… the contrast between “camping” and “lodging” grew stark.

And you’re paying more for all of this than if you were in a nice, cozy lodge!

The days of camping – at least East Africa’s style of “luxury camping” – are ending with this current recession.

Substance over Fantasy. Luxury camping ruined the fantasy.

It remains to be seen if the old days of camping will make a come-back at a reasonable cost. It will be harder, because there are fewer places that don’t have permanent camps or lodges which justify a mobile camp.

And I wonder if the animals will ever again join humans trying to be as wild as them.

But whether the old days of camping return, the ridiculous days of “luxury camping” are over.

‘Reliability over Fluff’ – This is one of the important redefinitions of the post-recession market in East Africa. It’s the reason that places like Ndutu Lodge will do well, and why places like Crater Lodge will now see a decline.

(Tomorrow, I’ll discuss the emergence of’ Substance over Fantasy.’ Why so-called luxury, mobile camping in East Africa is on its way out.)

The end of a recession is an exciting time for any industry, but particularly so for travel. The surge in bookings is the side-liners coming to the fore, the people who had planned to go but pulled back when the recession hit. We’re feeling that surge right now.

This burst of new travel was building continually throughout the recession. The fear that the recession wasn’t ending was the dam on the logjam. It kept building with people ready to go but who pulled back, afraid that the recession might continue. They waited until there was certainty things were getting better.

That’s happened, worldwide, and the net result is a bubble of healthy travelers bursting out at us. This group has a lot in common besides their financial endurance.

They are now redefining the next business cycle’s important parameters of price brackets and style.

It was the end of the 1973-75 recession that opened the gates of travel to East Africa. There wasn’t much to redefine, because there hadn’t been much before, but in the last half of the 1970’s decade travel to East Africa quadrupled from America.

Hardly ten years later, the end of the 1981-82 recession resulted in a massive redefinition of the American market to East Africa. That was when the first boutique safari camps appeared. The preceding decade had been one mainly of mass tourism, large groups staying in large lodges. The end of this recession marked the beginning of “style” (read: ‘luxury’) as an important component of American safaris.

It’s interesting to note that the single largest group of travelers to East Africa, the French, never really bought into this. French still remain the single largest nationality traveling on safari, but they never abandoned the big mass tourism lodges for the luxury lodges the way the Americans did.

That 1980s recession also redefined how people traveled, including the French. Suddenly there was a surge in couples and small groups, what the industry calls “FIT”s (Foreign Independent Travel). That was nearly unheard of only a few years preceding. That led to all sorts of revolutionary changes, like a whole bunch of new local airlines flying daily services to all the game parks.

While we had a recession in the 1990s, it was mild (GDP fell less than 2%) and didn’t cause any significant redefinition of that second big recession of 1980s. That may explain why there is going to be such a big realignment, now. This 2007 recession is only the third one since travel really took off to East Africa in the 1970s large enough (GDP falling more than 3%) to redefine the markets.

So for nearly twenty years we’ve had a linear growth in market parameters: mostly in style getting more and more lavish.

This time it looks pretty clear to me: out are the expensive and outlandish Fluff ‘n Fancy of places like Crater Lodge and so-called “luxury camping,” and in are reliable locations and services of places like Ndutu Lodge and Sanctuary camps.

This isn’t just a reflection of price. It’s also a reflection of the “New Efficiency” of the American traveler.

I think the American is becoming more European. I chuckle to myself now when I recall the many tourism conventions I’ve attended when around the bar we Americans would chastise our European counterparts for not “splurging” on the new styles available.

The irony, of course, is that at home the European lives a much more lavish lifestyle than the American. Our huge unused living spaces, poorly decorated reading rooms and bathrooms without bidets cast us with an unrelenting cowboy legacy.

American luxury and splurging is now going to be reserved — like with the European — for the backyard pond, the second home or refurbished kitchen. Home is going to be the focal point for luxury, not travel. A vacation – a safari – will have preeminent goals unique to its destination.

Like finding animals.

And it matters less and less that after finding the animals you fall into a feather bed. A nicely made up spring mattress will be just fine.

The depth, surprise and lasting impact of this latest recession will not fade from memory, soon. If you want to think of this “New Efficiency” dynamic as more related to the fear of another recession than just a maturation of where luxury is meaningful, be my guest. The net result is the same.

And here’s the beautiful ironic twist. Future safari travelers might even spend more than before, but it will be to lengthen their vacation rather than upgrade their accommodation. There will be new scrutiny of services. It won’t matter a hoot that you have sherry by a personal fireplace if there aren’t enough porters to get your bag into your room at the same time you arrive.

My personal experience in this last safari season traveling with this burst of new travelers really bears this out.

All properties have cut back. Chains and independents alike have reduced staff and overall services. But it was at Crater Lodge that we noticed it most. Crater Lodge had been the most talked about property in East Africa, an &Beyond extravaganza that guests fondly called funky. It’s lavish, and lavishly priced, currently $1500 per person per night in its highest season.

When you’re forking out that amount of money, even the tiniest decline in services stings. Of the four nights I spent there in the last six weeks, two nights experienced long periods of no electricity. Wake-up calls were routinely a half hour late. Dinner portions were smaller and smaller. Askari or “guards” were often found asleep rather than ready to escort guests.

I’m sure that the surge of new travelers will refresh Crater Lodge’s revenue stream enough to remedy these failings. But their effects are more long-lasting.

We realized that if there weren’t 12-foot high ceilings with an 8-foot dropping rheostatic chandelier over the clawfoot bathtub set in a nearly 200 sq. foot room that maybe not so much electricity would have to be used in the first place! That if we just used our own alarm clocks, we wouldn’t have to be waken up by an underpaid, under slept porter.

What the travelers realized is that they had paid for Fluff. And what they really wanted was not to miss the dawn game drive.

In contrast, little Ndutu Lodge, retailing in its highest season at $170 per person per night ran as it always did like an efficient time piece. Since the generator has always gone off at 11:30p, no one missed it in the middle of the night. The food was as ordinary and generous as ever, and wake-up calls came right on the dot.

Both Crater Lodge and Ndutu Lodge share an important component of success: their location. Crater Lodge is perfectly placed on the rim of Ngorongoro Crater. Ndutu Lodge is in the southwest Serengeti, seasonally perfect for the great migration. On that, neither of them can err.

But since you can stay for more than a week at Ndutu Lodge for the cost of a single night at Crater Lodge, the contrast has just grown too stark. There are three other lodges on the crater rim, and Crater Lodge can no longer compete with them economically.

And the staff at Ndutu Lodge was much better than at Crater Lodge. Ndutu employees are loyal, courteous and know what they’re doing. That could be because Ndutu retains its workforce much better than Crater Lodge does. The rooms were really nice, the beds wonderfully comfortable, the bathrooms fully functional.

A night’s rest at Ndutu Lodge is less stressful and now more enduring than at Crater Lodge.

There was a time just a short while ago when the rose petals lining your bathroom floor to your hot clawfoot bath garnered your every dime. Just won’t any more. Reliability over Fluff.