Oct 04

Rebranding African Tourism

Bryan Callahan

by Bryan Callahan
Category: Conferences, Cuisine, Economy, Marketing, Media, Music, Tourism, Travel, Where in the World

Most of my work in communications involves policy advocacy for global health and  development issues. Last week, I served on a panel at the Corporate Council on Africa’s bi-annual conference in Washington. The subject of the session was how to reposition Africa as a tourist destination.

At first glance, tourism and development  might seem to have little in common. But nothing could be further from the truth. For many African countries, tourism provides a major source of foreign exchange and foreign direct investment, and it is a major money earner in the “formal sector” (i.e., the sector of the economy that provides wage employment, is “on the books,” and generates tax revenues that can fund development).

The challenge is that Africa currently earns very little from tourism relative to other world regions.  (Go to the web sites of the UN’s World Tourism Organization and the World Travel & Tourism Council for more information.) While some African countries like Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and South Africa enjoy significant proceeds from tourism, the scale of their revenues just doesn’t compare to destinations in Europe, Asia, Australia, and Latin America.

How can African countries turn this around? I think the solution requires a mixture of tried-and-true approaches to destination marketing, as well as a  disciplined approach to: (1) recruiting a broader array of brand ambassadors, and (2) getting the bulk of African news off the front page. (More on that second, seemingly counterintuitive, point below.)

The tried-and-true approach includes a combination of proactive marketing and reactive crisis communications.  This means that African national tourism boards still need to invest in marketing their countries via multiple media channels, trade shows, and events, but they also need to develop effective crisis communications plans that empower brand managers to respond to crises when they arise and take steps to reassure the public and the tourism industry.

In regard to recruiting a broader array of brand ambassadors, I believe that there are four key markets to engage.  First, there are high-net-worth Americans, Europeans, and Asians who are looking for the vacation of a lifetime.  The African tourism sector can target this group with vacation packages that highlight the five-star quality of many African vacations and the unique qualities of a holiday in the Serengeti, or Kruger, or by the boiling waters of Victoria Falls.

Second, African tourism boards can target what I will call - for lack of a better expression - the “backpacker set.”  These are the twenty-something experiential tourists, the returned Peace Corps Volunteers, the American and European university students who pick Ghana or South Africa for their semester abroad, and medical and nursing students who want to practice their professions in communities that need access to primary health care.

If we can target this set when they are young - using the social media channels that are their most credible source of information - we can convert them to the cause and create lifetime brand ambassadors.  This younger set can also sing the praises of destinations that are stilll off the beaten track for high-net-worth tourists - like the beautiful hillsides overlooking the Zambezi inland delta in Mongu, Zambia or the rugged shores of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya.

A third critical target audience are African Americans who are seeking to reconnect to their heritage.  The west African tourist industry in particular can benefit by working with African American destination marketers to create tourism packages that highlight 500 years of cultural connection between west Africa and the Americas.

A fourth target audience is the sizable population of first- and second-generation African immigrants to America who maintain strong connections to their countries of origin and can broaden the conversation about Africa beyond landmarks, flora, and fauna to contemporary conversations about music, food, fabrics, and art.

This brings me to my counterintutive observation.  People who think about Africa’s image in the world often say that Africa never makes front page news unless the story relates to war, disease, hunger, or hardship.  While this statement oversimplifies matters (and is a definite reflection of the specific tone and focus of media coverage in the U.S., UK, and Germany), it also bears real elements of truth.

I believe that we need to change the image of Africa by investing in a rebranding process that features more stories - stories that appear in the Food Section, the Business Section, the Style Section, and, yes, the Travel Page.  We need to start telling new stories - based on credible facts - about Africa’s economic growth over the past decade, about Africa’s unrivalled biodiversity, about Africa’s potential leadership in the production of organic foods and materials, about Africa’s diverse cuisine and innovative music scenes (in Mali, Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya).

Telling new and surprising stories is key to repositioning Africa as something other than front-page tragedy.  Front pages are normally reserved for crises, wherever they happen, and it’s time to get the bulk of African news off the front page.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 4th, 2009 at 4:22 pm and is filed under Conferences, Cuisine, Economy, Marketing, Media, Music, Tourism, Travel, Where in the World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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6 Responses to “Rebranding African Tourism”

  1. WALTER VIEIRA Says:
    October 6th, 2009 at 3:16 am

    This is a good approach, and if implemented , with cooperation from all the stake holders, can contribute a great deal towards the development of the African continent.

  2. Bryan Callahan Says:
    October 6th, 2009 at 3:38 am

    Many thanks for your comment, Walter. As someone who has been engaged in branding/rebranding India, do you have any comparative insights to share?

  3. Carey Says:
    October 8th, 2009 at 2:09 am

    While I like the idea of getting more Africa-themed pieces in the food & lifestyle sections (and the mentality behind it), we have to be realistic that without more investments in the type of infrastructure tourists need, Africa will remain a niche market. You have to be able to find a taxi at the airport, use a credit card, rent a car (or use a decent bus)… Many or all of these are sorely lacking in too many places.

  4. David M Njau Says:
    October 8th, 2009 at 5:12 am

    I totally agree with you and have a few comments to make.

    The main reason for the distortion in marketing efforts for Kenya is because the country has never owned the industry. Tourism in Kenya was introduced by European tour operators whose model and business continue to dominate the industry to date. These operators have many destinations around the world and the moment our headlines are unpalatable, they simply pull out the plug and place it somewhere else.

    We must, as you say, diversify our attractions. To date, we still sell what the same tour operators opened up in the early days yet we have more places they do not even know of.

    Because we do not “own” much of our own economic activities, we lack the patriotism that can push our industries to the next level. I have always said that Kenyans in the US, Europe and other countries should be the ones selling Kenya tea and coffee for example but unfortunately for us, most of them do not “think” the tea and coffee is that great! The same applies to tourism, the friendliness of the people, the positive stories e.t.c.

    Our new outfit TaliiKwetu.travel is venturing into taking the comforts and trappings of tourism into the everyday lives of Kenyans. We hope to offer some tourism expertise and service to the ordinary folk while they learn, earn and play. We realize that trying to put them on the same holiday as the visitor is counterproductive and we will therefore meet them where they are culturally safe and in their most formal and easy selves. We still have much work to do with this project but we trust that as the years go by they will begin to sing a different song - one that promotes the country for what it really is - the greatest holiday destination in the whole world!

    To say the least, those in leadership and who are holding the purse need to hear this oftenly. Their efforts are continuously going to waste as they do the same of the old thing that does not work.

  5. Bryan Callahan Says:
    October 12th, 2009 at 5:48 pm

    Many thanks for your comments, Cary and David. I completely agree with Cary that infrastructure remains a huge hurdle with no easy solution. I was impressed, when I visited Nigeria in May and June, by how much investment individual state governments and the NTAA have made in upgrading the quality and safety of the country’s airports. Just those upgrades alone improved my attitude toward Nigeria and prompted me to reevaluate stereotypes about Nigeria that keep many travelers away. There also needs to be investment in African owned and operated facilities for tourists - from hotels, to transport, to restaurants, to campsites. A major challenge there - I am convinced - is not just lack of expertise in hospitality management and business management, but also lack of expertise in marketing. I think that smarter investment in these areas by multilateral and bilateral aid agencies can help African-owned businesses begin to attract the steady clientele they need to become sustainable businesses.

    When I was in Botswana in 2003, I visited a U.S. government-funded resort on the northeast perimeter of the Okavango Delta. It was a beautiful location with solar-heated showers, decent beds, affordable overnight rates, and a dozen or so mekoro operators who would take tourists out for a three-hour tour on the delta for the equivalent of USD $25. The challenge was what David pointed out: much better financed, European owned hotels on the Delta were capturing all of the tourists because they knew how to market themselves and had web sites complemented by search engine optimization. The African-owned hotel had a bare bones web site, created by a well-meaning British volunteer, that just couldn’t compete.

    I think that there is a lot that can be done to engage African-owned small businesses with donor-supported marketing agencies that can build their consumer profiles and maintain high-quality sites at little cost by operating at economies of scale for networks of tourism-related businesses. These marketing agencies can also do the footwork of responding to inquiries, organizing reservations, and staying in touch with rural tour operators by phone and text message. This is being done with some success in Zambia right now. And we should look at ways to replicate the success elsewhere.

  6. name Says:
    May 4th, 2010 at 3:02 am

    Hi,

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