Ecotourism is dead. From the President of Tanzania, to the much more critical tourism market itself, feather beds and five gallons to flush a toilet have subsumed efficiency and sustainability. Requiescat in pace.
“Community Based Tourism Projects,” “Fair Trade,” “Shared Value Pricing,” and a ton of other phrases to champion a capitalist market in control of its morals, today those lovely little properties and projects are disappearing downwards faster than loose jeans on teen hips.
It all began when the king tried to pretend he really really cared about the slave weeding his rose garden. And it was challenged when the consumer got fed up with allocating her hard won vacation to another cause. And it was finished when the world global crisis left only the rich in the leisure travel market.
Mombo Camp, Singita Lodge, and Bilila Kempinski, are just a few examples of what works, today, in African tourism, and they are anything but ecofriendly.
I can’t think of a single successful ecotourism property that has been built anywhere in Africa in the last five years, and most that were built prior to that are on the skids. Newly built properties, and the ones that are roaringly successful today are all spas and castles. And there are several reasons why this makes good business.
The foremost is that the mid- and down- travel leisure markets are rapidly shrinking, and by necessity, becoming more and more efficient in delivering their core product: vacations. Any type of exotic or what we used to call “adventure” travel is under heightened pressure just because of how hard it is to get to them and then use them, and these (especially in Africa) were the pillars of ecotourism.
The lower market tiers shrank as all travel shrank in the massive economic downturn, but they never recovered, as the upmarket did. There’s a lot of speculation as to why this is true and if it will ever return, but right now, it’s fact. The midmarket is AWOL.
And there’s another very important reason specific to Africa.
African wilderness is under siege. By development forces like mining and urban development.
Take forests, for example. In Kenya the loss of forests has so drastically impacted in real time the potable water of urban Kenyans that recently a sizable majority of voting Kenyans supported a pretty draconian move by the government to forcibly relocate nearly 40,000 people.
Take elephants. Concerted action by world conservationists to save the elephants began in the mid 1980s. It is a success story without a rival. Not only was a catastrophic slaughter stopped, but wildlife management efforts helped accelerate the recovery.
But to what avail, from the point of view of a young African trying to make a success in the world? To the avail that his farm is being mauled, that his county roads are being destroyed and that his children on a weekend country holiday are in danger?
Take the Serengeti highway, which is just one of many industrial projects currently being plowed through previous grand reserves in order to facilitate rapidly developing industry.
And take the relaxation of environmental standards, which kept the wildernesses healthy. This week Tanzania President Kikwete ridiculed the environmental community for trying to delay mining a 300 million ton soda ash deposit which lies adjacent the Serengeti and will likely at the very least destroy the flamingo populations living on Lake Natron.
“We cannot continue to mourn about our country being poor while our minerals are lying untapped and [while] … our neighbours, Kenya, are doing the same on the other side of the lake,” he said.
Which is true, and is the reason that the Kenyan side has no birds or animals.
“At times I wonder whether those who are opposing this move are really patriotic, because it seems as if they are agents of some people we don’t know,” Kikwete said. Bulls eye.
So with a shrinking wilderness and a shrinking market for it, what to do?
Build Up. As high and expensive as you can get. Be damned the resources consumed to build Versailles! Onwards and upwards! Four Posters! Plunge Pools! Solar Cosmetics!
The upmarket has by definition been primarily interested in comfort and style rather than context. It matters, but less with the upmarket, if the Serengeti road will disrupt the great wildebeest migration. So long as there is still a feather bed at the end of track that has a wildebeest or two, it will be just fine.
Bilila Lodge in the Serengeti is not so dissimilar to an Aman Resort Indonesia or a Canyon Ranch in Arizona. Bilila is a Kempinski property, one of the oldest, most successful European grand hotel chains that exists.
I just stayed at Bilila Kempinski and was truly astounded. The lodge is very remote and made even more so by a single access road that is 35 kilometers long. That’s one impressive driveway.
The public areas resemble any wonderful western spa or upmarket golf lodge, for example, with stylish architecture, spiraling staircases, giant lounge chairs, and lots of glass. The infinity pool is spectacular. Individual rooms are magnificent and huge with tasteful accouterments and the highest quality furniture.
But here’s what really got me: wifi worked better than in any upmarket hotel or lodge I’ve stayed at anywhere, in Nairobi or Dar. The wide-screen TVs had a whole arm’s length of channels, not the 7 or 8 limited ones found in Intercontinentals and Fairmonts in Africa.
Hot water was hot and always so. The air-conditioner not only worked, but well and softly, even when it shouldn’t have (when it was cool out). The telephone by the bed could ring my wife a half world away quicker than reverse when I was in any office in Africa.
The a la carte menus seemed right out of lower Manhattan, and the food was just as good. The boutique didn’t mess around with wood server spoons, but rather trendy canvas art whose price tags usually started at five figures.
Ecotourism is dead, because … it didn’t work. It relied on the generous spirit of middle class travelers willing to donote a little bit of their vacation to a better world order.
What an absolutely laughable idea, today.
so I understand the point about lots of extraordinarily high tariff places opening. But I still don’t understand why you posit that “ecotourism is dead”. Wilderness Safaris (for example) still builds camps that are “eco friendly”, recycling water, solar, being able to dismantle etc. And I suspect you have neglected to mentiom so while being luxurious. And you neglected to mention any lower priced places (a friend just got back from OAT trip to TZ and said their mobile tented camp was fabulous – and quite well priced)
Right on Nancy! I have been designing private mobile tented camps for nearly thirty years. I tried a dozen or so outfitters from the days of STS to the very well run and outfitted Good Earth Tours. When I frequented the Bots and Namibia markets Wilderness Safaris was the GREEN outfit to hire thanks to the likes of Colin Bell its brilliant managing director. Ecotourism is not dead, but your editorial has it approaching the morgue table.
Brighten up.
Nancy, Brett –
Thanks for your remarks, and for starting the conversation. Let me ignite it, further. Colin Bell, the founder and prior CEO of Wilderness Travel in SA left several years ago and the rumors have never subsided that part of his leaving was precisely because of the reduced commitment the business as a whole was giving to ecotourism. Promised funds for schools and boreholes never arrived. Caution. I do not have hard facts, these remain rumors, and I haven’t had the time to investigate them, but it is an honest assertion that a growing number of good people industry-wide throughout Africa are growing increasingly skeptical about the real return of promised ecotourism ventures, both in terms of its business profitability and its benefit to the community. I was personally involved in two where this was precisely the case, so it fits the theory.
Interesting views. Let me add my one, hoping to not be misunderstood in trying to get business to my camp. The topic is most dear to me. I think I am qualified to talk about ecotourism: I have founded Campi ya Kanzi, an eco tourism community lodge in a Kenyan Group Ranch, in the Tsavo Amboseli region. First Gold Rated facility (Ecotourism Kenya) in Kenya, internationally awarded (World Legacy, Skaal, Tourism for Tomorrow, World Savers). We cost $595 per person per day, all inclusive. Definitively not cheap, but I believe worth the experience and service we provide. On top we collect $100 per visitor per day, for the benefit of the Maasai community, through Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust (which employs 203 Kenyans). The Trust provides the community with health services, education services (both at primary and secondary levels) and in conservation (Wildlife Pays is a program where livestock killed by wildlife is compensated to the landlords).
For the Maasai this ecotourism joint venture is working.
I believe it is working even for the guests.
But I am afraid Jim Heck is right… It is not working in the market! Our competitors do not care about eco-sustainability (they talk about it though!) and have plunge pools outside their cottages (we are -to my knowledge- the only lodge in Kenya completely self sufficient in its water needs, by rain cropping and storing), or huge generators for their electrical needs (we have 120 solar panels and do not need a generator), or they employ managers and skilled staff who do not come from the community (certainly most professional). It seems that to sell a lodge today you need to go more luxurious, more “westerner”, to the detriment of both the environment, the local community and, in my opinion, to the genuineness of the experience guests will have.
My point here is that it is actually getting harder to sell a pure ecotourism lodge in the safari industry. Ecotourism is not dead, but it is certainly struggling to keep well and do more for the communities, who have to be involved, if we desire them to be fully engaged in protecting their wilderness and wildlife.
I have a question rather than a comment: if I had $2000 to spend (excluding airfare) on an African vacation, and I wanted to see some wildlife, take some great hikes, get to spend a day or two in a home stay, and maybe do some rafting/rock climbing/great view finding etc…are there no reputable organizations that could accommodate me? Or, are you saying that there are indeed a few organizations out there, but there are not enough people with the afore mentioned to tastes to keep them afloat for much longer.
Conor – “Reputable” does not necessarily mean “socially progressive” or “locally responsible.” That jargon aside, yes of course, there are both socially progressive and locally responsible companies throughout Africa, just not many and fewer and fewer… And yes, and likely an important cause of the foregoing, is that the market is no longer supporting these companies in the way it used to.
Jim –
I have been organizing safaris for 17 years. As soon as TripAdvisor.com came on the scene, it turned the focus of the ‘trip’ away from the purpose of a safari and more on a tour of hotels. Eco-friendly properties will always get a lower rating than those that sacrifice the eco-system for personal comforts. TripAdvisor is killing the safari. It is killing eco-tourism.
I have a question rather than a comment: if I had $2000 to spend (excluding airfare) on an African vacation, and I wanted to see some wildlife, take some great hikes, get to spend a day or two in a home stay, and maybe do some rafting/rock climbing/great view finding etc…are there no reputable organizations that could accommodate me? Or, are you saying that there are indeed a few organizations out there, but there are not enough people with the afore mentioned to tastes to keep them afloat for much longer.
Take a look at Gibb’s Farm. For 40 years she has been a model many copy for its practice of ecological tourism.
Who said eco lodges are supposed to be experiments in doing without?
Zak –
There are many MANY reputable companies, one of which is certainly Gibb’s Farm, that can provide you with a fabulous African safari in numerous different places on the continent (although your budget at $2000 is tight, given that the average price today in East Africa is pushing $500/day). But that’s not the point of this blog or hopefully, this conversation. The point here is that special respect for the environment, and in particular — fair involvement with the local people owning the land to which you’re headed — is less and less likely. Precisely because the greater market does not want to pay for this “special respect.” So don’t worry about finding a great vacation. But perhaps we should all worry that the market — of which we’re apart — is discounting aspects of that vacation that not so long ago were considered valuable, ecotourism.
It is not your country that you intend to exploit.