The Gambian Tourist Value Chain and Prospects for Pro-Poor Tourism

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Tourism in The Gambia: International ‘Best Practice’ in Poverty Reduction & Pro-Poor Growth Through Tourism Draft Report (Friday 22 nd December 2006) Box 20: Pro-Poor Tourism Regulatory Issue # 18 GTA can operationalise its marketing mandate and finance a significant destination marketing strategy without needing to utilise government funds and should do so in collaboration with private sector tourism stakeholders. Whatever the reasons for the lack of destination marketing, the consequences of it are significant. First, it makes it difficult for The Gambia to maintain market share of African tourism – particularly when facing sustained marketing pressure from African destinations like Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, all of which now enjoy at least fifty times as many international tourist arrivals as The Gambia. Second, the failure to implement a robust destination marketing strategy locks The Gambia into a dependency upon the marketing of international tour operators. This, in turn, locks the destination into the ‘winter sun’ product because – apart from one UK, one Dutch and one Spanish package tour operator – this is the only product they offer. Empty beaches in the Summer © Jonathan Mitchell In addition to encouraging public authorities to market The Gambia as a destination, there are real opportunities for tourist stakeholders to take their own initiatives. For instance, the World Hotel Link (www.worldhotel-link.com) marketplace network model offers a way for accommodation owners to link directly with independent travelers without facing large up-front marketing costs. The business grew out of a project initiated by the Mekong Private Sector Development Facility – an International Finance Corporation (IFC) funded project to assist small and medium scale accommodation providers to access the internet in 2002. Each destination needs a network partner who can be any suitable partner at the destination who speaks English, has computer skills and cares about building a sustainable tourism industry. Partners can be the tourist authority or a tour company or any other type of organization that is able to deliver the service required. This partner then provides the 50
Tourism in The Gambia: International ‘Best Practice’ in Poverty Reduction & Pro-Poor Growth Through Tourism Draft Report (Friday 22 nd December 2006) interface between the tourist and the accommodation providers (and receives a commission in the form of a share of the revenue generated by bookings). An introduction between the Hotel Association and WHL has been facilitated because The Gambia is precisely the kind of destination that local actors may see interesting benefits from this kind of initiative. 6.5 Seasonality of demand From a destination perspective, a major constraint on tourism development is the seasonality of tourism demand. This has been discussed in some detail above and does indeed constrain the sector and the benefit of poor people from tourism. Strategies to reduce seasonality include marketing to re-brand the destination and offering a diversity of tourism product that feed into many of the parallel themes in this section. 6.6 Accessibility Accessibility in this context relates to almost complete control international tour operators have over the destination, as the access from the major source markets is through charter aircraft. The argument, receiving strong endorsement in the Master Plan exercise and previous tourism policy documents, is that this control on the supply of seats impedes the growth of tourism and there is an urgent need for a scheduled service for The Gambia. As of 2006, a scheduled service now operates between London and Banjul, under the Gambia Experience. In addition to this, more UK regional destinations have better, if not direct access to The Gambia, with most of the UK-based tour operators increasing their chartered services. There is also a build up on Northern and Southern Europe access, and the introduction of flights improving access to North America. In our interviews, tour operators suggested that the growth of the tourism sector was constrained by demand, rather than accessibility. However, this is in direct contradiction to the increase in the number of flights offered by these tour operators, for winter 2006/07 – this equates to about a 20% increase in number of seats, mainly from the UK 41 . Whilst a 17% increase in number of beds (as shown in Table 4) can meet some of that increase in demand, there should be some concern given to how existing infrastructure, will be able to meet this rise in potential volume. Issues such as environmental impact, supportive marketing strategies and maintaining quality of product, needs to be built-in into any expansion. Increasing accessibility has a crucial role in addressing seasonality issues, for example, using summer seasons to attract different markets, such as Southern Europe or North America, whose success in 2007 remains to be seen. As accessibility is seemingly private sector-led, it serves to further compound the dependency of the tourism sector on international tour operators, enabling them to deepen their markets, rather than diversifying the market base. As such, it becomes difficult to disentangle market demand for travel from the company strategy of tour operators. This is particularly because effective marketing is being done by the tour operators, essentially allowing them to dictate how to promote The Gambia. Existing markets, particularly the UK, have developed better accessibility, and focus should now be placed on improving accessibility to emerging or marginal markets, such as North America and Southern Europe. Box 21: Pro-Poor Tourism Regulatory Issue # 19 GTA should, in conjunction with the GCAA, examine whether there are any barriers to entry for scheduled carriers and carriers from a range of destinations to serve The Gambia and offer adequate promotional support for such an initiative. 41 Flight Schedule for Winter Season 2006/2007 from the Statistics Unit, Department of Commerce, Gambia Civil Aviation Authority 51
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The Gambian Tourist Value Chain and Prospects for Pro-Poor Tourism

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