PHOTO: The preservation of Africa's vanishing wilderness is dependent on a healthy tourism economy in Africa. (photo by David Cogswell)

The 2014 Ebola epidemic will be over soon, but the damage left by the Ebola panic will not go away so quickly.

The reports on Ebola are increasingly positive: the eradication of the disease in Nigeria and Sierrra Leone; the slowing of it in Liberia; the gradual lapsing of monitoring periods of those who have been exposed; the effective treatment and survival of people who fall ill with the disease.

With the end of the epidemic in sight, the African travel industry must now start to pick up the pieces and carry on. Massive economic damage has been sustained, not only to tour operators, safari lodges and reserves, but also to efforts to prevent the extinction of some of Africa’s most precious wildlife.

TravelPulse spoke with Ashish Sanghrajka, president of Big Five Tours, a company that began in Kenya as a safari operator, about his thoughts on how the industry should move on from here.

TravelPulse: What are your thoughts about how the travel industry should go about its recovery from the Ebola panic?

Ashish Sanghrajka: It’s a tough question because there is no right or wrong answer. And there is no playbook that exists for it either.

Some of these politicians are just … I don’t even know what to say about them. It drives me crazy. They rope the whole continent into one. Half of them have never been there and don’t know where it is on a map, let alone the distances involved, and here they are setting policy…

We’ve got politicians saying you can catch Ebola from three feet away at a cocktail party. Another one is saying, “This is why I voted for immigration reform, because it ends up bringing Ebola across the border,” neither of which is true and one is totally absurd. And yet here they are using them for political points.

And we are paying the price, I mean everybody.

The savvy travelers are still going to go. But in terms of the mainstream traveler, the conversation is starting to shift from being concerned about catching the disease to the conversation about, “If I go I don’t know if I can get back into the country.”  

They are putting gasoline on the fire instead of helping to put it out. Dave Herbert [founder of Great Safaris] was right to say we just have to wait for the cycle to end. The cycle is ending. So let it end. There’s light at the end of the tunnel and it’s great. So why aren’t our leaders actually helping us?

Given that situation, now that we are seeing the tapering off what should the industry do to recover?

There are three things that have to be done and they have to be done collectively. One of the problems we face in this industry is called “The Prisoner’s Dilemma.” You want a collective voice, but invariably someone is going to break rank and do something for personal gain. We have to look at this as an industry. We can’t do it for self gain.

One of the things I am urging operators to do is to come together and lobby the Department of Education as one voice and say let’s make geography part of the core curriculum in our schools. I know education is on a state level, but the Department of Education has a responsibility. If we are talking about making our educational system one of the best in the world, then we have to admit our weaknesses actually do something about it. And this has uncovered it. And the operators I have spoken to are very supportive. The most common thing I am in is “We’re in!” But it’s like pushing water uphill. Where do you start? But the first thing is getting that.

No Fire Sale

The second thing is: the fire sale cannot start. When people go on safari in Africa they have to pay a fair price. A $1500 safari is a $1500 safari. You get what you pay for. But the most common knee-jerk reaction now is, “Let’s get volume back in the country, lower the price 50 percent and get that market back in.”

But the sophisticated traveler that is coming there is not the low-end traveler. The sophisticated traveler is the one who wants things done and wants to have an experience. And if we show them a commodity we have done even more irreparable damage. Look at Egypt. Look at how much of a commodity that has become. Egypt can recover faster because it’s got ruins, something that is not as endangered as wildlife.

The best example is in the Galapagos. Since 2009 the average price points for Galapagos have been going down. We’ve been watching very closely. We work with the recycling center there, and the amount of garbage that has passed through the recycling center in the last three years has exceeded that of the previous seven years.

The number one thing that that has increased is plastic bottles. Now plastic bottles are not supposed to be used by ships, but you’re talking about ships that have such thin margins and such high break-even points, they lose money if the ship is not at least 80 percent full. With all the discounting, the quality of people who are coming to the Galapagos is going down. Ship owners have told me they are charging less today than six years ago.

It’s mind boggling because you’re talking about an ecosystem that is like nothing else in the world. They could charge whatever they wanted to. Just make up a number, add as many zeroes as you want, people will pay it. You have something nobody else has in the world, yet it has become a commodity.

In Africa it’s the same thing. You have something nobody else has in the world. The wildebeest migration in East Africa, there is nothing like it. It is called “the Greatest Show on Earth” for a reason.

I’ve been going on safari all my life and last summer for the first time I saw a pack of hyenas hunting, from start to finish. I’ve seen almost everything you can think of and this was the first time I’ve seen that. It was incredible.

What we’re talking about is that if we start discounting and instead of two vehicles watching that you have 50, that event doesn’t happen. You have the same thing in Southern Africa. In the Okavanga Delta in Botswana or the Kalahari Desert in South Africa there are things there that nobody else in the world has. And if we start turning them into a commodity, then the damage that will have been done to the country will take decades to recover from.

The average stat is for every 10 percent you reduce your price, it takes five years to recover your price. Egypt has lowered prices by 50, 60, 70 percent. You do the math. Five years for every 10 percent. That’s why most companies in our area don’t believe in discounting.

So that’s the second thing. The fire sale cannot start. This is the part that is the Prisoner’s Dilemma. We as operators must all agree that we are going to hold our ground on what we charge, whatever that price is. We hold our ground and we don’t water down the experience. Whatever part of the market you play to, stay there and play the market properly. Don’t try to be something you’re not.

The Conservation Conversation

TP: Good point. You can walk away from the Pyramids and they are going to stay there. You walk away from this wildlife and you leave it for the poaching industry to destroy.

I read an article in a conservation magazine that said that if elephants are extinct there is so much widespread damage that is going to start occurring, because of what they represent to other species, such as the way they compact the grass. The tall grass would not grow back the same way because the ground is not compacted, which will impact the way lionesses and cheetah hunt. Cheetah have to have flat ground to hunt because of their speed. Imagine them having to hunt in an area that is not flat.

If A happens all we are looking about is B. What about steps C, D, E … all the way to Z in terms of the chain reactions that would occur?

No matter what we do, the principles that we agree to are carried forth.

The third thing, the positive side of all this is that this whole conversation has shifted to one of conservation. The idea of conservation has always been, “If I have time I’ll do it,” or “I donated to this charity.” What people are starting to realize is that’s not conservation. That’s great, but there’s so much more to it. So if nothing else, this has brought these issues to light. You can donate to a charity and that’s a fine and noble thing, but if you are doing a safari the wrong way, you are undoing everything you have done. If you’re taking that discounted safari, look at the damage you’ve done, with 50 vehicles watching that hyena. There’s no way.

For companies like ours that are committed to sustainable tourism this is going to galvanize us even more. But companies that are not focused on sustainable tourism, that are saying, “Oh yeah, it’s on the side if we can, but our main focus is on making money so we have to move as many passengers as possible…” – if nothing else this has opened their eyes to see that this is something important, because if we don’t focus on this now, we’re not going to have a business. We’re not going to have an industry.