You can no longer buy a ticket on American Airlines through Expedia or Orbitz. Said another way: the big guys are fighting for your money and it doesn’t matter a hoot.
American Airlines is the U.S.’ second largest airline and the world’s third. After the completed merger of United and Continental later this year, it will drop another notch. Don’t lose any sleep over this.
Expedia and Orbitz currently account for about a quarter of all airline bookings made by U.S. travelers. After American’s move this week, that could drop at least temporarily by about half.
And what will happen to your air fares?
They’ll go up.
And what would have happened to your air fares if all of this hadn’t happened?
They’ll go up.
And what will happen if they resolve this, as they certainly will?
Fares will go up.
And how much more or less will fares have gone up depending upon when its resolved or not?
0.
So what’s happening? What’s happening is that Expedia is trying to screw you more than American already has.
The high and mighty morality with which both sides in this Big Guy Fight have evoked is disgusting. Both sides, of course, claim that consumers are the losers and because of the other side. That they are championing competition. This is such balderdash.
Americans (not the airline, but the organic ones) are basically idiots when it comes to buying their airline tickets. They are suckers of the highest standard. Duped by hidden fees and outright fraudulent advertising, they will spend hours on their computer to glean $10 off a $150 fare.
That is not competition in action, it is obsessive-compulsive behavior.
And the winners in this insanity are the airlines and brokers like Expedia who realized that paranoid-driven consumers could be duped by internet games. American spokesman Ryan Mikolasik told the New York Daily News that the impoverished multinational is losing “several hundred million dollars a year” in fees paid online services like Expedia.
That is several hundred million dollars that isn’t being used for fuel, maintaining aircraft, salaries, amortizing loans or advertising, research and development, and it certainly isn’t being used for coffee or tea.
That is SEVERAL HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS more than flying is worth. But don’t think that if American is successful, that you’re going to get a refund!
American Airlines alone is projected to earn over $400 million. That’s AFTER on-line fees.
Before this tiff Expedia controlled nearly a quarter of the ticket purchase market in the United States. That does not foster competition. Whenever any entity controls that large a segment of such a vital commercial market, competition is stymied not enhanced.
Capitalist principles in the purchase of airline seats were doomed when Jimmy Carter started the process of airline deregulation in the 1980s. That was the mistake that American society made, removing government oversight from a vital service so essential for every day life.
So it’s now chaos, with the Big Guys fighting over who is going to be able to screw us the most. And by the way, it can also flip over and screw the airlines and their employees royally, too. As happened with all the airline bankruptcies.
And I hesitate to point out that more and more mechanical problems are happening, because government oversight in that critical area is also wanting.
So don’t choose sides on this one, dear consumer. It won’t matter a hoot. And for god’s sake, don’t waste your time finding a ten percent deal from New York to Chicago by flying via Houston. You’re killing yourself, shortening your vacation, wasting your resources and foolishly increasing the number of miles flown.
It boils my blood, which I wish they were capable of doing with coffee on short-haul flights, which as you know, they don’t even do that, anymore.
East Africa is booming, so many of the stories of 2010 were terrifically good news. But there were the tragedies as well like the Kampala bombings. Below I try to put the year in perspective with my top ten stories for East Africa for 2010.
1. Populace democracy grows.
2. Terrorism grows, as does the battle against it.
3. Huge stop in the mercenary purchases of Coltan.
4. Momentum for peace in the runup to establishing a new South Sudan.
5. Tourism clashes with development, especially with the proposed Serengeti Highway.
6. New discoveries of fossil fuels produces new wealth and a new relationship with China.
7. Gay Rights grow public but loses ground.
8. Rhino poaching becomes corporate.
9. Hot air ballooning’s safety newly questioned in game parks.
10. Newest early man discoveries reconfirm sub-Saharan Africa as the birthplace of man.
#1: POPULACE DEMOCRACY GROWS
Theoretically, all the East African countries have operated as “democracies” except for the torrential years of Idi Amin in Uganda. But the quality of this democracy was never very good.
Tanzania was a one-party state for its first 20 years, and that same party continues to rule although more democratically today. Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi experienced one dictator after another, even while democratic elections at regional levels challenged the executive.
But the end of the Cold War destroyed the alliances these developing countries had with super powers. Purse strings were cut, and political cow-towing ended. All of them moved towards a truly more democratic culture.
And in 2010 huge leaps were made in all the countries towards more truly representative government. The most important example by far was the overwhelming passing of the new constitution in Kenya in a national referendum where more than 75% of registered voters participated.
And like the U.S. election which followed shortly thereafter, and like support for national health care in the U.S. and so many other issues (like no tax cuts for the rich), Kenyan politicians dragged their feet right up to the critical moment. They tried and tried, and ultimately failed, to dissuade Kenyans from their fundamental desire to eliminate tribalism in government and more fairly distribute the huge wealth being newly created.
I see this as People vs. Politicians, and in this wonderful case, the People won!
And there was some progress as well in Tanzania’s December election, with the opposition growing and its influence today moving that country towards a more democratic constitution.
(It was not so good in Rwanda or Uganda, where stiff-arm techniques and government manipulation of the electoral process undermined any attempt at real democracy.) But the huge leap forward in Kenya, and the little hop in Tanzania, made this the absolute top story of the year.
#2: TERRORISM GROWS
Four smaller bombings in Nairobi’s central business district over the year were eclipsed by two horrible simultaneous bombings in Kampala bars on July 11 while patrons were watching the world cup. Police display an unexploded suicide vest.
Al-Shabaab, Al-Qaeda in Somali, claimed responsibility. And throughout the year Shabaab grew increasingly visible along the Kenyan border as its power in Somali increased.
I’ve written for a long time about how the west has had its collective head in the sand as regards terrorism and Al-Qaeda in particular. Long ago I pointed out that the locus of Al-Qaeda terrorism had moved to the horn from Afghanistan, and this year proved it in spades.
The country with the most to lose and most to gain in this war on terror is Kenya, because of its long shared border with Somalia. And the year also marked a striking increase in the Kenyan government’s war on terror, and with considerable success.
With much more deftness and delicacy than us Kenya has stepped up the battle against Al-Shabaab while pursuing policies aimed at pacifying any overt threats to its security, by such brilliant moves as allowing Omar Bashir into the country and not arresting him (on an international U.N. warrant). As I said in a blog, Kenya Gets It, and the story is therefore a hopeful one.
The Dodd-Frank Act is our victory!The Congo Wars continue but are abating, and in large part because of a little known provision in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act which now makes it almost impossible for major corporations in the U.S. to buy the precious metal Coltan on the black market.
A black market which has funded perhaps Africa’s most horrible war for more than a generation. Hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – have been killed and raped, and more than 20,000 children conscripted into brutal wars, funded by purchases of Coltan and other precious metals by Intel, Sony and Apple.
It certainly wasn’t just this little legislative move. The U.N. peace-keeping force, fabulous diplomatic initiatives by Uganda and a real diplomatic vigilance by the U.S. all were instrumental. But the year ended with the least violence in the region in more than two decades.
#4: SOUTH SUDAN
I may be jumping the gun on this one, because the referendum to create a new country, the South Sudan, is not scheduled to occur before next month. But the runup to the referendum, including the registration process, while labored looks like it’s working.
Allied loosely with the Congo Wars, the civil war between the North and South Sudan had gone on for generations until a brokered peace deal five years ago included the ultimate end to the story: succession of the South into a new country.
The concept is rife with problems, most notably that the division line straddles important oil-producing areas. But in spite of all of this, and many other ups and downs along the way, it looks to me like there will be a South Sudan, and soon. And this year’s new U.N. presence in Juba, donor-construction of roads and airports, all points to the main global players in the controversy also thinking the same.
The creation of a new state out of a near failed one is not the be-all or end-all of the many problems of this massive and powerfully oil-rich area. But it is a giant leap forward.
#5: THE SERENGETI HIGHWAY & TOURISM
Last night NBC news aired a segment on the Serengeti Highway controversy, elevating an East African story into American prime time. Good.
But like so many reports of this controversy, the simplification ran amok. NBC’s reporter Engels claimed the motivation for the road was to facilitate rare earth metals like Coltan (see above) getting into Chinese hands more quickly.
While there may be something to this, it’s definitely not the main reason, which is much more general and harder therefore to fight. As I’ve often written, the highway as planned will be a real boon to the Maasai currently living to the east of the Serengeti, as much if not more than to the Chinese.
And as far as I know, Maasai don’t use Coltan.
Roads bring commerce and may be the single quickest way to develop a region. This region is sorely in need of development and recent Tanzania politics has aligned to the need for this regional development.
The highway is just one of many such issues which came to the fore throughout 2010 in Kenya and Tanzania. Concern that the west is just interested in East Africa as a vacation destination with no regards for the struggle for development, has governed quite a few local elections this year.
The whole concept of tourism may be changing as the debate progresses. I believe very deeply that the Serengeti highway as proposed would hinder rather than help development. But as I’ve pointed out, alternatives are in the works.
And the real story of which the highway story is only a part, is how dramatically different East Africans have begun to view tourists in 2010.
#6: NEW RESOURCE DISCOVERIES ALTER GEOPOLITICS
For years I and other African experts have referred to East Africa as “resource-poor.” Kenya, in particular, had nothing but potash. Boy, did that change this year!
Although only one proven reserve has been announced in Kenya, several have begun production in Uganda and we know many more are to come.
China has announced plans for a pipeline and oil port in northern Kenya at a cost of nearly $16 billion dollars, that’s more than twice the entire annual budget for the Kenya government! Deep earth techniques have matured, and China knows how to use them.
More gold has been found in Tanzania, new coal deposits in Uganda, more precious metals in Rwanda… East Africa is turning into the world’s rare earth commodities market.
A lot of these new discoveries are a result of technology improving: going deeper into the earth. But 2010 freed East Africa from the shackle of being “resource-poor” and that’s a very big deal.
#7: GAY RIGHTS ON THE HOOK
African societies have never embraced gay rights but as they rapidly develop, until now there was none of the gay bashing of the sort the rightest backlash produces in the U.S. U.S. Righties manipulating East Africa.
That changed this year, and in large part because of the meddling of U.S. rightest groups.
In what appears to now have been a concerted many year effort, support from U.S. righties is leading to a vote in Uganda’s parliament that would make homosexuality a capital offense, and would jail for long terms those who failed to out known gays.
This extreme is not African, it is American. Mostly an insidious attempt by those unable to evince such insanity in their own society to go to some more manipulative place. The story isn’t over as the vote has yet to occur, but it emerged and reached a crescendo this year.
#8: RHINO POACHING EXPLODES
Poaching is a constant problem in wildlife reserves worldwide and Africa in particular. Rhino are particularly vulnerable, and efforts to ensure safe, wild habitats have been decades in the making. Dagger from rhino horn.
This year, they seemed to come apart. It’s not clear if the economic downturn has something to do with this, but the poaching seems to have morphed this year from individual crimes to corporate business plans.
This leap in criminal sophistication must be explained by wealth opportunities that haven’t existed previously. And whether that was the depressing of financial goals caused by the economic downturn, increased wealth in the Horn of Africa where so much of the rhino horn is destined, or reduced law enforcement, we don’t yet know. But 2010 was the sad year that this poaching exploded.
#9: IS HOT AIR BALLOONING SAFE?
Hot air ballooning in Africa’s two great wildernesses of the Maasai Mara (Kenya) and the Serengeti (Tanzania) has been a staple of exciting options to visiting tourists for nearly 30 years. That might be changing. Is it Safe?
A terrible accident in the Serengeti in early October that killed two passengers and injured others opened a hornet’s nest of new questions.
After working on this story for some time I’ve personally concluded 2010 was the year I learned I should not step into a hot air balloon in East Africa, at least for the time being!
#10: EARLY MAN WONDERS
There were not quite as many spectacular discoveries or announcements about early man this year as in years previously, but one really did stand out as outstanding and you might wonder what it has to do with East Africa! Representation by Tomislan Maricic.
DNA testing of Neanderthal proved that early man from Africa didn’t wipe them out after all, but absorbed them into the ever-evolving homin species.
And that absorption, and not massacre, happened outside Africa to be sure. But it finally helps smooth out the story that began in Africa: It’s likely that Neanderthal were earlier migrants from Africa, and absorption was therefore easier, physiologically and biologically.
It’s a wonderful story, and fresh and exciting, unlike the only other major African early man announcement about Ardi which was really a much older story, anyway.
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HAPPY NEW YEAR to all my loyal readers, with a giant thank you from me for your attention but especially your wonderful comments throughout the year. See you next year!
What do I have in common with Arthur Frommer and Google? We don’t think you should use TripAdvisor!
You shouldn’t believe everything you read. Verification and consistent fact-checking is the mantra of good investigative analysis and journalism. Experts take time to become experts. Monday Morning Quarterbacks are good for nothing but Budweiser.
You shouldn’t believe a car mechanic who tells you that your breaks aren’t working because your foot is suffering from Fibromyalgia. You shouldn’t believe a cotton farmer who tells you that nylon is bad for your skin. You shouldn’t roll over your IRA into the hot lead penny stock. You shouldn’t believe a Republican who tells you he favors cutting the deficit.
And you shouldn’t believe a traveler you don’t know about the quality of his recent experience.
That’s been my gripe: the wholly and exclusively subjective analysis of TripAdvisor reviews bereft of any expertise whatever.
And Google, now, seems to agree.
Last week the on-line search engine marketing firm HitSearchLimited reported that “Google seems to have removed [TripAdvisor] reviews from sources that do not have a verifiable method of ensuring that each review is written by a verified source…”
Yes! (Not that I’m a great fan of Google or anything that gets this big, but when the bigwigs start to fight among one another, I’ll route for those carrying my view to be sure.)
Time and again I’ve listened to astute clients claim that they are fully capable of reading between the lines, judging which reviews seem more credible.
It’s possible, if you’ve had a similar experience to what the review is about, but still unlikely. At the very least, you need to know the reviewer, as you would know and trust your friends about a travel experience. The known idiosyncracies and prejudices of your friend you’ll understand temper his/her evaluation, and you’ll probably then be in a better position to use the review.
Arthur Frommer has carried on his own campaign against TripAdvisor for as long as I have, and in last month’s blog critical of TripAdvisor he reiterated, “I will not choose the London or Paris hotel recommendation of an amateur who has stayed in exactly one London and one Paris hotel in the course of their entire life.”
The UK based KwikChex, a vetting agency for travel companies, announced in September that it was representing more than 120 travel companies (mostly hotels) in a possible class action suit against TripAdvisor.
This gets much more onerous than just my or Frommer’s general cautions about using TripAdvisor. These 120 travel concerns, one of which I know personally, have been defamed by malicious reviews on TripAdvisor using outright lies.
Kwikchex can be hired to sort things out. With enough documentation, TripAdvisor can be convinced to remove a review and has done so, specifically at Kwikchex’s behest. But the time and expense can sometimes be deadly for a small travel company or hotel.
The ego of many who believe they have “discovered” something is hard to suppress. The reason you don’t buy that tonic to grow hair is because … well, it doesn’t grow hair! Despite the old hairy man on the television who says it does!
As a travel consumer, you need to evince that same kind of discipline. Some of you may, indeed, think you can ferret out the more likely true from the less likely true in a string of TripAdvisor reviews.
Will increasing safari costs scare away new visitors?As if you didn’t already know, it’s official! This year Africa (Cape Town and Nairobi in particular) saw the highest hotel price increases in the world!
Last week the HPI Index was released by the UK company, Hotels.com. Their biannual report is one of the most accurate and heavily used in the industry.
Of the 15,750 locations surveyed, the Number One city with greatest increase in cost from last year to this was Cape Town (54%), the second was Shanghai, and the third was Nairobi (31%)!
What is even more telling is that both Cape Town and Nairobi are inching their way up into the top ten most expensive hotels in the world. Right now, Geneva holds that rank ($232), but Nairobi is $216 and Cape Town $180.
Overall, world prices have recovered only to where they were in 2004. They peaked in the third quarter of 2007, at that time 20% higher than 2004. World-wide, therefore, prices remain depressed by about 18% from before the economic downturn.
But not African cities! Why?
Cape Town’s answer is simple: the World Cup. Nairobi’s answer is more complicated but is basically two-fold: China and political stability.
China is investing so incredibly heavily in Kenya that it’s pushing up all prices related to visiting one of Kenya’s principal cities (Nairobi or Mombasa). You can’t build a road or drill an oil well without thousands often tens of thousands of builders and consultants that need a place to stay.
And a close second is the marvelous turnaround Kenya has pulled off in the political arena: a new constitution is in place. The city has attracted some of the world’s most prestigious world conferences as result, with tens of thousands of delegates.
This incredible spike in prices in these two African cities has elevated safari prices in the bush, but that seems counterproductive to me. Because occupancies in the bush are falling, after a short surge in 2009. Nevertheless, most properties in the bush have their offices if not sister properties in the city, and the effect was unstoppable.
My prediction isn’t rocket science. I think Cape Town will slip (there isn’t another World Cup coming into town) and Nairobi will stabilize but continue its slow growth upwards.
As for safari prices, I think they will start to disentangle themselves from the anomalies in their cities. 2011 will be a good year for safari vendors, but not as good as 2010, so I think we’ll start to see an end to increases if not actual drops in prices by the end of 2010.
For those of you thinking of going on safari, though, I’m not sure you’ll notice anything. In fact, American resellers increased their costs three or four times greater than the hotels in 2009. This is because they had so heavily discounted them during the economic downturn.
So for the end-consumer, I predict prices will remain the same. What we may see, though, is a return to the great last-minute deals that characterized 2008 and 2009. These were often restricted to same company safaris or very specific lengths of stay, but if you could tolerate the lack of flexibility, it often meant savings of up to a third.
These were heavily booked especially by veteran safari travelers, visitors who had already been introduced to the safari world and knew what they liked and didn’t. So if you’re one of those, and capable of going within a month or two of an announced deal, keep that computer internet engine fired up!
There’s an elephant on the Jomo Kenyatta runway, and everybody thinks it’s a peacock! Cool it. Wait for the real figures, will ya?
Yesterday’s blogosphere was alive with premature (I prefer, preternatural) celebration. The Kenya Tourist Board said preliminary figures show it headed to the “best year ever” in tourism.
Say, again.
Half of Keekorok Lodge closed in the high season?
&Beyond specials for Kichwa falling out of the sky like rain?
Reserve fees increasing 50% to cover last year’s costs?
Slow rebuilding of all the lodges and camps in Samburu?
AND:
The Tanzania Tourist Board just announced this week that it would fall short – far short, 25% short – of its projected 2010 figures for tourism.
What bloggers are miscalculating are visitor arrivals and airline statistics and translating them into tourist arrivals.
Airlines are adding service into Nairobi at around 9%, according to IATA. Visitor numbers are up, even in Tanzania. But airlines and visitors aren’t necessarily tourists.
What’s happening is that gold, oil and oil products, cut flowers, potash to India, and minerals like coltran are up and up. The planes that are headed to Kenya take passengers, but mostly cargo.
Only one other region in the world had a greater increase in airline traffic than Africa: the Middle East.
Guess what, that wasn’t because of tourism, either. It was because of oil and war.
Now gold, oil and oil products, cut flowers, potash to India and minerals like coltran also need salesmen, managers, financial wizards and battalions of consultants. Kenya’s incredible exercise to create a new constitution drew literally thousands of outsiders.
Hillary hasn’t been on safari since she took over Ngorongoro’s Serena Lodge in the 1990s.
But tourism will benefit from all of this. There will be more ways, and likely cheaper ways, to get to safari if airline traffic continues to increase into Nairobi.
(Frankly, I don’t know how on earth Nairobi’s airport can handle any more planes. It’s supposed to be rebuilt, but that’s over 5 years, and right now I worry more that I’m going to crash entering and leaving the gate area, it’s so congested with aircraft.)
Obviously, I would like tourism to increase, and I think we’re on a slow and arduous path to seeing it happen.
But this time around, it’s the Tanzanians, not the Kenyans, who have the right figures. And it’s no peacock under that arriving A380!
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.
Which to choose for the same price: a week in the left bed or 1 night in the right bed?!!Reliability and Substance over Fluff ‘n Fantasy. That’s the read from the surge in new travelers to East Africa.
‘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.
World Cup fever is in full swing as the FIFA countdown clock hits 95 days, 22 hours, and 10 minutes. China’s olympic sized debutante ball in 2008 has made it all too easy for pundits to bill the upcoming World Cup as a continental coming out. I admit—I’ve fallen for the hype.
According to the optimists, the South African World Cup will create 129,000 jobs, make major strides in the battle against HIV/AIDS, increase the efficacy of South Africa’s security services, add 21 billion Rand to South Africa’s GDP, and cure cancer while halting global warming. (That last bit was all mine.)
And South Africans are dancing in celebration to K’naan’s “Wavin’ Flag,” the World Cup 2010 official song.
Naysayers claim that the so-called ‘African World Cup’ has priced Africans out of attending.
They are mostly right. Although the government reserved many $20 class-four tickets for South African residents, purchasing tickets elsewhere requires internet access and a credit card.
Those two qualifications alone would eliminate the majority of the continent. Furthermore, airfare and non-resident ticket prices would price out most fans from Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroon, and Algeria who want to follow their teams to South Africa.
But this misses the point.
Yes the World Cup venues will be swarming with white football fans, and yes many African football fanatics will be forced to watch the game from a Nairobi bar, or village video club, but that’s ok! This does not detract from the fact that Africa has moved up a weight class.
Africa’s influence beyond its shores is surging across all sectors.
The continent’s impact on international culture, security, health, and politics will continue to grow in the decades ahead as its minerals reshape geo-politics, its native sons and daughters accumulate on foreign shores, and its stark inequalities foster global menaces like pandemics, piracy, and extremism.
In 95days, 22 hours, and 10 minutes South Africa will strike a blow against the image of a continent hell bent on self-destruction and replace it with one of hard earned success.
This World Cup Americans account for a larger percentage of foreign-bought tickets than ever before.
American families want to combine a chance to see the World Cup with a once-in-a-lifetime African safari. This means that thousands of Americans will come home in July with an image of Africa that rarely graces the front on the New York Times.
So you’re ready to make a killing in East Africa? And I don’t mean lions.
The savvy investors are gathering like vultures and tiny predators at the kill. Next month in Berlin several deals may consummate at ITB, one of the two most important tourism conventions each year. It’s sort of the tourism calendar’s January and comes right after the World Economic Forum’s tourism competitive report is released.
Investors are usually from Europe, less often from America, and recently, China. They are less likely this time to come from South Africa, because South African tourism has been less effected by this downturn than East Africa.
When civilian and diplomatic workers are excised from U.S. travel, Africa is the area which has experienced the greatest growth last year (over 26%), and I’m presuming the bulk of this is to South Africa.
So while South Africans have played an important role in tourism investment in East Africa in the past, I don’t think that will be the case this time. They’ve got to tend the farm and the rains are good.
My ripe pickens are the property collections of &Beyond, Sarova, three or four pieces of the 6-piece Fairmont hotels, the Selous Safari Company (SSC) and some or all of Heritage. All of those except SSC could be managed into some stellar quick returns by the right team getting a fire sale price and then exploiting the current upturn.
&Beyond in East Africa is currently a financial sinkhole. It’s also the mostly luxurious and arguably the best-known consortium in East Africa. But it has complicated ownership in South Africa, has come to or is coming to the end of its tax exempt statuses, has invested heavily in its South African properties and none in East Africa, and the signs are all there: buy me!
&Beyond is a classic case of becoming too big too fast at just the wrong time. It will take some clever group to turn it around, but I think it’s possible.
A possible player is Geoff Kent’s Sanctuary Lodges, although it probably doesn’t have the capital required even in this depressed environment. It might also create a conflict with Sanctuary’s alter-ego personality to &Beyond. AND there is still a lot of bad blood over the litigation between the two companies over the & (the Ampersand used by both companies’ marketing).
Local interests, like Cheli & Peacock, could make a good fit, but C&P has expanded pretty quickly over the last two years and taking on something so big could sink the ship.
The irony with &Beyond is that it is so big and so good that it might have conceptualized itself right out of the East African market altogether. If South Africa itself weren’t doing so well, there might be South Africans like Colin Bell who would expand their experiments in East Africa by sweeping up &Beyond’s remains, but that looks unlikely this year at least.
Sarova has invested heavily in the last few years and upgraded some quiet little properties in the Mara and Nakuru, only to suffer the world economic collapse at the end of the business plan. Their properties are good, but the company is a neophyte in the industry with poor marketing. The rumor is that Asians (and not from Biashara street) likely from Hong Kong are looking hard.
The Chinese are the mystery players. Their heavy investment in Tanzania’s TAHI properties through one of their discarded oil company practioners went bad, and right now they continue sending lots of tourists but seem indifferent regarding investment. But the pressure for Chinese vacations is explosive. This just might be the fit.
Fairmont is the old duke trying to figure out what to do with his unused castles. Although a Canadian company, it was the team in Dubai who pushed for and orchestrated the purchase of the Lonrho properties, and they now know better than ever why Tiny Roland had such a hard time off-loading them in the first place.
The Norfolk is performing, and dreams persist with the Mt. Kenya Safari Club. But the Aberdare Country Club and The Ark have been taken off the Fairmont website, and the Mara Safari Club will be axed shortly.
I actually love these properties but I couldn’t advise anyone to buy them. The safari dynamic is changing quickly, and properties like these that rely on a road circuit rather than a flying circuit will become poorer and poorer performers. If anyone knows how to move the Aberdare Country Club lock-stock-and-barrel into Udzungwa National Park, they’ve got a winner!
But I have a feeling that the price might be so low that even local Kenyans might make the buy.
It would take an investor with great patience to offload the SSC from the long-time Tanzanian business family of the Dobies. It’s a great small set of properties which enjoyed a monopoly for years, but the area in and around Dar and the Selous has suddenly built way too much capacity. In ten years that could change. And it could be a steal if the Dobie family realizes it should return to its root business of transport and car sales in the exploding Dar market.
And Heritage, well that’s a mystery, a mixture of passion, local Kenyan ownership, and miserable returns. It’s too big, its attempt at a two-tier marketing level (kids/families and the older luxury market) just isn’t working and yet it continues to present a happy face. Its new website is dynamite. Reduced to its best performers I think it could be a really good company.
Individual holdings that may change include the unopened Chem-Chem in Tarangire, the new Kempinski Bilila in the Serengeti, Saruni in the Mara and certainly a couple properties up in Laikipia and beyond where the drought was so bad.
Potential buyers for these are very small investors who love Africa, and there are plenty of them.
It’s an exciting time if you love Africa, want to invest and think you know how to manage very unique and often disparate properties. As we say, we’re thundering out of the valley and the peaks look quite attractive not too far down the line!
There are incredible deals available for tourist investors in East Africa right now, but everyone is sitting on their hands waiting for a crucial report due out in the next couple weeks.
The world famous Davos meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) ended several weeks ago with headliner Bill Gates announcing the “Decade of Vaccines” to help Africa.
But the East Africa tourism industry is still biting its nails waiting for WEF’s 2010 report on the risks of investing in their economies.
WEF considers there are about 130 countries in the world where tourism investment shows the greatest potential. The East African countries have always been in this list, mainly because the return on investment is so high in East Africa… when things go well.
When things don’t go well, well, it’s a bottomless well. We call it “peaks and valleys,” and while that dynamic is unlikely to attract George Soros, it’s great for small investors who gauge the entry and exit points correctly.
This annual report has been a deal-breaker in East Africa in years past. The large Fairmont Hotels chain made their historic investment in Kenya after a positive report. Fickle Sheraton Hotels has been known to buy and sell its management contracts days after the report was issued.
And smaller investors, often from South Africa, have plunged in and out in Spring time right after the reports were issued.
The tourism industry in East Africa is seriously depressed right now. No way but up? This is a situation ripe for the bottom feeder investor, someone with some ready cash to sweep in and collect near bankrupt properties.
Kenya has always been WEF’s best bet in East Africa, except in 2008 which followed the incredibly turbulence of the 2007 elections. But it quickly regained its position as one notch above Tanzania for 2009 (97 in the list; Tanzania was 98; Uganda was 111).
WEF looks to the investment environment more than the investment potential. It’s up to the investor to gauge the potential. But what WEF has consistently said for more than two decades (except for 2008) is that Kenya provides the best investment environment in East Africa.
Part of that might be that Kenya has the largest industry, and also the most accessible. Twice as many tourists visit Kenya annually as Tanzania, but an average week’s trip in Tanzania costs $1600; in Kenya it’s only $800.
(Those figures, by the way, are NOT what the consumer pays, rather the revenue collected locally.)
The difference in large part has to do with Kenya’s large beach vacation industry: half of Kenya’s tourists never leave the beach, and that’s a much less expensive routine.
Nevertheless, Tanzania’s prices have increased much more quickly than Kenya’s in the last three years. That figure alone will discourage an investor who much prefers a gradual but sustainable price increase over the mid-term.
So presuming that both Kenya and Tanzania will hold their own in the 2010 report, what companies in East Africa will investors be looking at?
Can this creature bring peace to Africa?In this so troubled time for East Africa there are some exciting glimmers of hope for societies and conservation.
Stand on any of East Africa’s high mountains and look east to some terrifying developments. Al-Qaeda militia are gathering on Kenya’s borders. The drought in Tsavo decimated the hippo population and spurned the bushmeat trade.
But look west and it’s a different universe. In the Congo, once one of the most turbulent spots on earth, there is a smell of peace, and long-time conservationists have smiles on their faces.
Recently an old friend, John Lukas, General Director of the White Oak Conservation Center, asked me if we might consider restarting tourism to the Congo.
John has maintained an oasis of conservation in that troubled region for nearly 30 years, the Epulu Research Station. His first interest was the rare okapi, found only in the Ituri, but since then his center has expanded and supported a wide array of other research.
Terese and John Hart, probably Africa’s most professional, dedicated long-term field scientists, worked even further away from Epulu’s oasis, among the Congolese pygmies and besieged communities decimated by decades of war.
The Harts raised a family while they researched in the “Heart of Darkness”. They were sometimes out of touch for weeks. In the worst of times, sane conservationists wondered what the hell they thought they could do in a part of Africa that Joseph Conrad had clearly labeled “out of reach”.
Well, they unearthed remarkable science about bonobos and newly discovered primates, and conducted the only good social science of the pygmies bushmeat trade, among so much more. And now, Terese has established promising beginnings to creating what would be Africa’s largest single conservation area, named for the time being as “TL2″.
This oblique, geographical reference to one of the most wondrous, colorful if not magical places on earth is typical of the Hart’s low-key but ever-steady science.
In an email to me over the weekend Terese remarked, “I believe that the situation has been improving for the last several years and with the right engagement tourism is definitely possible.”
Incredible. The last time I took tourists into the Congo was in 1979.
The southern Sudan, where impressed child soldiers created what was called with primitive burlesque, the Lords Resistance Army, there really now is peace after a generation, and a new and massive national park has been created.
I hope to write much more in the coming days about the Sudan’s Boma National Park, and about “TL2″. These incredible areas hold promise not just for the conservation of bongo and bonobo, as well as other extraordinarily rare animals and plants, but the promise of peace to their society.
Rwanda’s gorilla project has proved that the revenue tourists provide can exceed almost any other exploitation of natural wilderness, and if managed properly can lead to increased social development.
It’s not a stand-alone model, but it is remarkable that through the many troubles Rwanda suffered after the gorilla project was started, the health of Parcs de volcans continued to improve, including the size of the mountain gorilla population. Without tourism, this wouldn’t have been possible.
And the health of that single albeit most important conservation project in Rwanda is arguably one of the reasons Rwanda is now stable and prosperous.
Keep your fingers crossed! I’ll be writing more about these exciting areas in the weeks to come.
At last East African tour companies are doing the right thing to try to get back on their feet, and there are incredible deals for new bookings.
The New Year arrived with a plethora of tour deals, and they’re real. They include ridiculously cheap airline tickets, internationally and domestic, 3rd and 4th nights free, and just the good old drop in prices. These are real deals that will be pulled once the market recalibrates.
One of my great criticisms of East African tourism over the years has been the typical but counterproductive reaction to a downturn in business of raising prices.
I know that’s counter-intuitive, but as I’ve explained before, supply/demand really only works well in a functioning free market. The developing world is moving that way, but they aren’t quite there. Even in the most scrooge-like companies in the developed world, laying off workers is expensive. There are either severances to negotiate, or high unemployment taxes to be paid.
Not so in the developing world. Just tell Johnny at 4 pm not to come to work, anymore, and then close a third of your lodge. Raise the prices on the bookings which are left and maintain a semblance of profit. The profit will be a lot smaller than it was, but it won’t be a loss… except, of course, for Johnny.
The problem with this strategy is that the market is not waiting in the sidelines to jump back into East Africa. If prices go down in India, it’s likely quite a few potential East African visitors will end up there, instead. A huge percentage of East African travelers come as referrals, so every booking lost represents multiple bookings for the future.
The raise-your-prices, lower-your-costs strategy is terribly short sighted for East Africa. East Africa must mature into the real supply/demand dynamic that governs world tourism.
This time, East African companies seem to be getting it right. Prices are definitely dropping. I reported earlier that 2010 contract rates issued last November showed a 5-10% decline over 2009. This is the first time since EWT has been keeping records that there was ever an announced decline in contracts.
And over the New Year’s weekend, a whole bunch of new offers began appearing.
A number of tour companies, including EWT, are now able to offer free Zanzibar or Mombasa beach stays after 10 or more day-long safaris.
Air fares have sunk through the basement. The leader is the airline, Swiss, which is offering roundtrips from New York at $1143.10 with taxes, and from London at $646.50 with taxes. But there are many others close to this. Many are offering free stopovers at interesting places, such as Turkish Airlines, where you can now stopover from the U.S. at Istanbul, then continue your East African trip for around $1200.
Business might be doing the right thing, but the Kenyan Tourist Board is stuck in the past.
Last week it announced a “vigorous recovery” of the tourism industry which was a flat-out lie. Announcing an expected 680,000 arrivals for 2009, the KTB proudly said this was a huge recovery representing a 17% increase over 2008.
Uh, did anybody remind that statistician that 2008 had tourist arrivals of 50% of 2007, because of the political turmoil in the country, and that there was no economic downturn in 2008?
What a joke. Kenya was approaching 1.2 million visitors in 2006. Let’s be real, honest and forthright. Neither the consumer or travel reseller is going to be anything but perturbed by these ridiculous statements.
Anyway, this morning’s overall reality is great! It’s taken so damn long for East African businessmen to realize what is necessary in the global market. I don’t think anyone should start planning a recovery party, soon, because this downturn has been deep. Whether tourism or tea, the recovery will be a long one.
But those who take true supply/demand initiatives, and who are honest with their consumers and resellers will still be standing when the sun finally rises.
And tourists, don’t wait for that sunrise! The deal is now!
Travel is a leading indicator of the economy, and the evidence is mounting that the recovery will be slower than in the past. Rwanda is today’s example.
Since the end of the Rwanda turbulence in 1994, so much money has flowed into Rwanda in all its sectors, that this little country has emerged as an economic powerhouse.
Its roads are the best in east and central Africa. Its capital is the most modern. Its communications are the least flawed. Its textile and tea industries for a country 1/20th the size of Kenya is now approaching 1/5th the revenue.
Rwanda tourism has been more or less limited to its mountain gorillas, its prized treasure, and this, too, has expanded nicely. In 1993, 24 tourists daily could visit the mountain gorillas. Today, it’s 56.
This is because increased research, habituation and park development, have combined to not just increase the gorilla population, but also visitor access to it.
And the pressure for tourism development has been so heady that the country set aside another huge swath of wilderness to develop as chimp and primate reserves. The great Nyungwe National Park has always been a protected wilderness as such – mainly because the dense forest makes any normal human development very difficult – but in the last five years was earmarked for very serious and rapid tourist development.
One of the problems for a small area is that there just isn’t enough room for a lot of players. So the Rwandan government put its faith in Dubai World, a property development company which we now know is the reason that the government of Dubai is in the tank.
Nyungwe was going to be developed by Dubai World. The first and now ailing mountain gorilla lodge, Gorilla’s Nest Lodge, was bought by Dubai World for refurbishment. Kigali’s second conference complex hotel was going to be built by Dubai World.
Not now.
And while this example is an exclamation point of how the economy has tanked, the broader picture supports the leading indicator thesis that tourism overall is recovering very slowly.
Gorilla permits are not being bought up. There always seem to be some available. There were supposed to be six lodges serving the mountain gorilla park up and running, now. There are only 3 functioning continually.
The aid and directed investment to Rwanda is greater than any other country in the area compared to its overall economy. That will continue. But in this relatively small universe of tourism, we can see all too clearly that the future for tourism in Africa isn’t too bright.
The first hard indication of how much tourism in East Africa has been effected by the global downturn was revealed, today: Down 25-30%.
The announcement was made by Richard Rugimbana, a spokesman for the Tourism Confederation of Tanzania, during a conference in Dar-es-Salaam this morning.
Tourism numbers are very hard to get from East Africa and are generally skewed by the analyzer to promote a certain position. Earlier this year, for example, the Kenyan Tourist Board claimed that tourism was down only 10%. We all knew this was ludicrous.
I think Rugimbana’s numbers are more likely.
November is generally the latest date that hoteliers and transport operators announce their rates for the following year. EWT’s compilation of rates now shows a general decline of about 10% over the 2009 rates, but in fact, it could be much deeper.
Special offers by a host of hoteliers and local airlines are being constantly extended. These take various forms but the two most popular seem to be a 3- or 4-night stay for the cost of 2- or 3-nights, and an extension of low season rates into higher seasons.
The second form is more substantive and generally results in a discount of a third to a half. It also allows forward strategic marketing. The result is normally a long term rate reduction. We see this happening right now mostly among the smaller companies, although a few larger ones like Serena, are fiddling ever so slightly with the idea.
Anecdotal evidence is supporting a long-term reduction. Fairmont, Sopa, Cheli & Peacock, among many other major players, have been unable to reverse their serious job cuts, and &Beyond is reported to be considering closing indefinitely one of the three wings of Crater Lodge. Serena, which historically has offered very deep discounts for the local market, is reportedly extending a blind eye to foreign resellers paying them at these heavily discounted rates. None of these companies will confirm these rumors, but they are widely known on the street.
The border between Tanzania’s Serengeti and Kenya’s Maasai Mara has been closed since 1977. Despite hopeful signs earlier this year, it won’t be opening, soon.
Yesterday, the Tanzania Tourist Board (TBT) announced forcefully in Dar-es-Salaam that the rumors of a Balanganjwe border crossing reopening after more than 30 years were incorrect.
As I reported in June, I spoke with newly redeployed Kenyan border officials at Balanganjwe who had just arrived from Nakuru. The old post and buildings were being refurbished.
The much publicized East African free-trade agreement was signed, sealed and delivered to all the East African countries involved several weeks ago. Tourism was an important part of this agreement, and KATO, the influential association of Kenyan Tour Operators, hosted a news conference with Kenyan Government Tourism Minister Najib Balala, Monday, who “confirmed” that the border would open, soon.
No, says Tanzania. Worried that Balala went way too far the TBT broadcast emails all over the world — to embassies and consulates, to every operator they could find in Africa and elsewhere — saying this just wasn’t true.
“Esteemed clients,” the circular begins, the border will remain closed for “environmental reasons.” The TBT went on to explain that the “fragile ecosystem of the area… cannot be sacrificed for the purpose of shortening the route between Maasai Mara and Serengeti National Park.”
What a joke.
Read my blog of September 17. The Tanzanians, and the TBT in particular, are doing everything possible to avoid environmental concerns in new development plans for the Serengeti.
The business plan of the multimillion dollar new airport and new roads and many new lodges would be seriously undermined if access to the Mara was made easy.
The border originally closed in 1977 during an historic dispute over the ownership of the then East African Airways, which later became Kenya Airways. In the seventies, Kenya was the only prosperous country of the three Britain had hoped would become a single confederated East Africa: Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya.
Uganda was in the bowels of Idi Amin. Tanzania’s socialist experiment while doing wonders for education was not producing a very good bottom line. The seven aircraft of East African Airlines that flew between Nairobi and Europe were jointly owned by the three countries, but only Kenya had the resources to maintain them.
In a lightning quick move the Kenyan government in cahoots with then British Petroleum confiscated the planes when (remarkably) they were all together on the tarmac in Nairobi (not a very wise way to use aircraft). In less than an hour, the Kenyan Supreme Court bankrupt the airline, then let the Kenyan government buy it for what amounted to the debit on the books owed by Tanzania and Uganda (which, of course, Kenya had already covered to keep the airline going).
In retaliation Tanzania closed all borders with Kenya and confiscated all the Kenyan tourists equipment in the country: Landrovers, minibuses, charter aircraft… and tourists. More than 130 tourists were held hostage for several days until Pan Am flew a mercy flight into the country to evacuate them.
Tanzania and Kenya are the best of friends, now. But the move in 1977 provoked a development of a real Tanzania tourist industry, which until that point had been completely dominated by Kenya.
As time passed there just was no reason for Tanzania to give up growing advantages. Tanzania’s wilderness is generally considered better and more exciting than Kenya’s wildernesses, and certainly less crowded.
Kenya gets the heads up for better service and facilities, but Tanzania so far has managed to have the upper hand with lions and wildebeest.
What is so ironic about this is that by invoking “environmental concern” Tanzanian officials are actually paving the way to over development in the Serengeti as I explained in the September 17 blog.
Opening the border would all but kill many of the new expansion plans set for the Serengeti, truly a move consistent with greater “environmental concern.” This sort of sounds like the health insurance industry claiming concern for the health of the U.S.
You can no longer buy a ticket on American Airlines through Expedia or Orbitz. Said another way: the big guys are fighting for your money and it doesn’t matter a hoot.
