Question

Questions:

5) What are the advantages and disadvantages to countries that promote frontier tourism?

6) Discuss how nations can create a competitive advantage in attracting tourists.

Roughing It: Tourists Are Boldly Going Into African Trouble Spots

A conservationist in oil-rich Gabon leads the way in promoting tiny nation’s sur ing hippopotamuses and other natural attractions, as part of a regional push for tourism amid instability

By Alexandra Wexler

Oct. 19, 2018 5 30 a.m. ET

WONGA WONGUE, Gabon—For the past decade, an energetic conservationist has been building the foundations for a tourism industry in Gabon, where rare forest elephants stroll down the beach, hippopotamuses surf in the ocean waves and blue-faced mandrills march by the thousands through the jungle.

The challenges for Gabon’s national parks authority and its head, Lee White, include transporting clients to remote camps in a country with little infrastructure, recruiting pygmy trackers from deep within the jungle and training antipoaching units who have to battle armed hunters and illegal gold miners in one of the world’s most pristine stretches of wilderness.

Over the past decade, with the support of government and overseas philanthropists, Mr. White has transformed Gabon’s parks authority from a group with just 100 staff with a budget of $500,000 to a $30 million operation with 800 employees, 175 cars, 35 boats and a number of aircraft, including a helicopter. Tourists have begun to arrive, with visitors up by a third this year through July compared with the average over the same period in 2017 at the country’s most-popular national park for international tourists.

Mr. White’s Gabonese gambit is at the leading edge of a trend attracting a growing list of African economies: frontier-tourism products in places that visitors often more-closely associate with conflict or instability.

In recent years, a small but swelling segment of the tourism market has been drawn to places like Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Virunga National Park, which was recently closed after two British tourists were kidnapped and their ranger killed, and war-torn Central African Republic. Tour operator Thomas Cook Group PLC recently sent a delegation to Sierra Leone, which has struggled with civil war and more recently an Ebola epidemic, to discuss offering package tours.

“There is a trend recently of interest in ‘unexplored’ places,” said André Rodrigues Aquino, a senior natural-resources management specialist at the World Bank, who advises African

governments on their tourism sector. “It’s very linked to nature, places that have pristine unspoiled nature.”

The numbers are small compared with sub-Saharan Africa’s broader tourism market of $43.7 billion in 2017, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council. But countries with the strongest growth in international arrivals in 2016 compared with a year earlier were Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Eritrea and Togo, according to the African Development Bank.

“A lot of people who have traveled previously, particularly in Africa, are looking for different experiences in different places,” said Peter Fearnhead, chief executive of African Parks, a nongovernmental organization that manages 15 national parks in partnership with governments across Africa. “The fact that [these places are] so edgy, we’re finding that there’s an increasing interest.”

The niche but expanding market for frontier tourism in fractious security environments has governments and companies seeking to balance revenue potential against the investments and know-how needed to ensure safety.

Oil-rich Gabon, a sparsely-populated country the size of Colorado on Africa’s Atlantic seaboard, has one of the highest per-capita incomes in sub-Saharan Africa and is one of the more stable countries in the continent’s central region. But when Mr. White took the reins of the country’s newly created national-parks agency in 2009, the vast nature reserves that cover about 20% of the country existed essentially only on paper.

= “The first priority when I was appointed was to manage the parks and when necessary, defend them,” Mr. White said. He created antipoaching units and armed rapid-response teams to push, with much success, ivory poachers out of the parks.

There are exceptions. Parks officers have had two gunbattles with illegal gold miners in a park called Birougou in the past six months, Mr. White said.

At Zakouma, a national park in the desert nation of Chad, poachers had massacred about 90% of the park’s elephants by the time African Parks took over its management in 2010. Since then, the group has transformed the region into a haven for one of Africa’s largest single herds, now about 560 elephants strong. By establishing flights to link the park with Chad’s capital city— and joining with a group of private guides as part of the marketing strategy—the park’s revenue is expected to be just under a $1 million this year, up from about $50,000 in 2015.

The mobile-tented safari experience that African Parks offers is booked about 18 months in advance, but it takes a maximum of just eight guests at a time and is limited to the dry season.

“It’s not a sustainable solution for the park,” said Stuart Slabbert, head of conservation-led economic development for African Parks.

Experts say national parks across the continent will struggle to expand their tourism revenue without a cooperative and supportive government.

In Gabon, Mr. White’s plans have been aided by his close relationship with current President Ali Bongo Ondimba, established while his father, Omar Bongo Ondimba, was still in power. Though Gabon is

theoretically a democracy, the elder Mr. Bongo ruled for 42 years and the current president, who took over when he died in 2009, won close, tense elections in 2016 marred by accusations of fraud that ignited countrywide rioting.

This year, Mr. White began actively marketing safari-type trips to the parks for the first time. Possible sightings include sea turtles hatching on the country’s beaches, humpback whales breaching in the surf and Western lowland gorillas lazing while their babies climb and swing around trees: a literal jungle gym.

“It’s not savanna tourism. You have to work to see this stuff,“ said Michael Nichols, a photographer who took a picture of Gabon’s surfing hippos that Time magazine calls one of the 100 most influential images of all time. “That doesn’t preclude that it’s frigging unbelievable. It could be like the Amazon.”

Answer 1

5)Frontier tourism is an interesting concept where the tourists look for natural and real-life experience in their journey. There are certain advantages and disadvantages associated with such tourism.

Advantages:

• Low maintenance cost for governments, organization or overall tourism industry. The tourists do not expect fancy infrastructure when they come for frontier tourism and this can save the cost for the industry.
• Enriching experience for the tourists. The experience may vary depending on the location, time and the type of tourism. For example, if a tourist comes expecting seeing wildlife from close, he/she may or may not experience. However, the overall experience is usually enriching and extremely sought after by tourism purists.
• Differentiated value proposition. Frontier tourism provides an experience that is different from conventional tourist spots and locations. As a result, the product stands out.

Disadvantages:

• Low regulation means low opportunity for the government to generate revenue. Since frontier tourism takes place with a different motivation rather than that of conventional “tourism”, government and the industry has little control over how the system can be monetized.
• High risk activities and locations are part of frontier tourism. Naturally the chances of mishaps are also quite high and this has a potential to give the overall country and the industry a bad reputation.
• Promotion for frontier tourism usually happens through word of mouth. Naturally it may be a little difficult to gain traction initially.

6) In order to gain competitive advantage as a tourist attraction, the nations need to understand the mentality of the tourists they want to attract. If we take an example of Gabon, the high number of Hippopotamus population allows them to attract tourists who are interested in wildlife. Similarly, if we take an example of Maldives, the target audiences are usually leisure seeking wealthy individuals. Now their geographic position and resources have a lot to do with it. It is key to understand what resources are available and what kind of audiences that you want to target. Need to identify what is unique about the country.

Once the target audience and the resource have been identified, the nation’s government must provide infrastructure that can promote tourism. Consider South Africa, the support for guided Safari is present. On the other hand if a country Gabon is planning to promote frontier tourism for Hippopotamus then they may not need such infrastructure. But the basic requirements must be provided such as a nearby airport, small towns, etc.

Once that is done, the government also prepare various risks (internal and external) that the tourists may face. Create provisions to mitigate the risk and take necessary precautionary measures. The key to remember is that, the main purpose of tourism is the experience. Nobody wants to get hurt while visiting other countries.

After this, the government and the nation may begin their promotion of their value proposition.