E-tourism: a path to Fair Trade for Africa.
Margaret Grieco, Professor of Transport and Society, Napier University and Visiting Professor, Institute for African Development, Cornell University
"The significance of tourism in less developed countries continues to be a matter of contention as many nations seek to expand their industries in pursuit of economic rewards, but become vulnerable to adverse impacts while doing so.
Introduction: widening the definition of e-tourism.
Travel and tourism are undertaken to expand the understanding of the world in which the traveller or tourist lives. Historically, access to such understanding was relatively bounded by physical accessibility. The capture of the moving image and transmission of sound altered some of these boundaries but interactivity with distant locations was very limited. In the present, the limitations on interactivity have been dramatically reduced and virtual travel from the desk or even the cellphone is readily available within the developed world - the world which has the high income and the most resources to spend on tourism. Widening the definition of tourism to include e-tourism becomes an important step though one not yet frequently taken(Harrison, 2002).
In this context of interactivity, e-tourism itself should be defined more widely than its prevailing definition (Anyumba,G 2000; Scottish Parliament, 2002) which is as a form of booking or scheduling or paying for vacations. E-tourism could be defined, alternatively, as the use of new information communication technologies to provide on line access to holistic cultural resources and experiences and associated souvenir products or cultural artefacts.
Souvenirs are an important component of any tourism economy (Hitchcock, 2000). As part of the material culture of tourism, E-souvenirs can play an important part in creating a sustainable tourism economy - an economy which is not immediately and dramatically affected by health scares or transport difficulties in the wake of terrorism. Through e-tourism, the crippling negative consequences of being at the wrong end of a tightly coupled globalised transport system can be offset. Cultural goods - souvenirs - can be themed and converted into more robust design concepts: visiting African web sites on line can be used as a marketing tool for selling a larger African range of linked products than the traditional souvenir which fits into the traveller's suitcase or into the overhead compartment in the plane.
The on-line market of craft goods permits the repeated return of the e-journeyer to the site with the opportunity for repeated sales of the e-tourist good: return e-visitis have lower financial and transaction costs than physical visits and can form the basis for a higher volume of cultural purchases than the single exotic trip.
Widening the definition of e-tourism in this way opens up a number of paths to fair trade in cultural artefacts: poverty tourism or community tourism can be linked with e-tourism providing the e-tourist with an ethical base for the journey undertaken. The fair trade dimension becomes part of the e-journey: and the authenticity of cultural products becomes the fair trade bridge between those with income and those with craft cultures still highly preserved. The rest of this paper explores the current body of knowledge on this widened definition of e-tourism.
2. Marketing the culture: moral and technical matters
SARS, AIDS, terrorism and the transport disruption caused by terrorism have all had their consequences for global tourism. The impact on African tourism of disease, disaster and deliberate damage are all evident: reviews of the current state of tourism focus on the difficulties recently experienced by Kenya. Not only was tourism impacted by consumer perceptions of danger and distress in the Kenyan social enviroment but tourism was directly impacted by the closing down of the tourist air bridge to Kenya at the determination of an external (and imperial ) state, Britain.
The need for other economic options to back up tourism become clear. Tourism is not sustainable if unilateral action elsewhere - and by stronger economic interests - can wreck local organisation designed to provide the safety and convenience to tourists necessary to secure an important income stream. 'Sustainable tourism for Africa' will increasingly have to deal with the issue of transport dependence and independence as 'Fair Trade' issues if Kenya's highly adverse experience is not to be repeated. Similarly, 'sustainable tourism for Africa' has to be discussed in a context where tourist boycotts are used as a political tool against discredited or failing states - the experience of Zimbabwe provides a telling example of the vulnerability of 'sustainable African tourism'.
Mr Mwenga said: "The European Union, Australia, New Zealand and countries in the Americas are all warning their citizens against travelling to Zimbabwe. This has been a blow to our tourism industry, and has impacted significantly on regional airlines".
The smaller 14-seater plane is cheaper to charter and operate than the usual Boeing 737, he added, but even it was struggling to cover costs. "We have therefore also cut back on the number of flights between the capital Harare and the tourism town of Victoria Falls," said Mwenga.
Having outlined this vulnerability in Africa' s search for sustainable tourism, the objective of this paper is to explore ways of reducing this vulnerability. The suggestion being put here is that new information communication technologies can be, and are being, harnessed in a new form of tourism, a tourism of journeyless travel. Before going on to explore the technologies which support this journeyless travel, let us reflect on the extent to which this can reduce the impact of external governments on the undertaking of a journey. E-restrictions are more difficult to implement without having an impact on the organisation of the stronger state in such a negotiation.
Perhaps, the best place to start discussing the prospect of journeyless travel -and its potential as a back up strategy in the context of the vulnerability of Africa's prime tourist sites - is the 'safari'. 'Safaris', the tourist trip to the African game park, is already being undertaken electronically. A visit to Africam (http://www.africam.com/)- a service for which the viewer pays - will provide you with realtime access to a webcam located in a Safari Park. The internet marketing for the site carries the legend: AfriCam welcomes you to the world's first virtual game reserve. Similar web cam Safari Park coverage has been developed in South Africa ( http://africa-web-cams.com/about.htm - and the intention is to extend this program.
The technology for e-tourism, the inexpensive webcam - is already globally available and in place. Issues such as who owns the technology and who has the rights to film within a Safari Park become critical. Similarly, the technology for transforming the realtime virtual journey into cdroms and other marketable commodities is already available. Organising Safari Tourist provision into an electronic form which can provide back up sources of income when physical tourism is dissrupted is clearly possible.
How organised was Kenya for the physical interruption of the Safari tourist trade? The answer seems to be that despite the availability of technologies which could help offset the dramatic costs of interruption, the marketing structures of the Kenyan tourism industry were not well organised to use the available technology to service clients with an e-tourist package during the break in transport provision and so preserve client loyalty for an eventual trip.
Web-cams are being used by a number of African islands and by beach locations in South Africa ( http://www.wavewatch.co.za/newsite/long_beach_cam.htm to market tourist destinations: setting a web cam to watch the beach does not offer the same quality virtual tourist experience as does having the web cam set to watch animals at a watering hole but the growing adoption of this technology indicates the need to think wider about the definition of e-tourism. Virtual tours of UNESCO world heritage sites such as Stone Town, Zanzibar ( http://zanzibar.net/zanzibar/stone_town) or the Old Town of Ghadames, Libya or the slave forts of the Ghanaian coast could be constructed and used to more widely market souvenir and themed goods as tourism strategies both as independent earning streams and as back up strategies for disrupted physical travel tourism.
3. Developing financial and administrative systems: ensuring fair trade
Ensuring that the e-form of tourism in the form of e-services such as web cam access to real time virtual tours of cultural and leisure interests - safari park or festival - results in the revenue returning to the country of the web cam location becomes a priority and this requires the developing of appropriate financial and administrative systems around fair trade in the e-domain. It is time to give thought to such matters given the speed with which technology is developing and the recent dramatic patterns of interruption to the physical tourist trade in Africa.
The Safari Park web cams in South Africa are operated as a public/private partnership:
The goal of Africa Web Cams is to help communicate the magnificance of our Province's (KwaZulu Natal) wildlife, and natural and cultural heritage, to the people of the world.
In one sense, the locations of web cams at Tembe is an end itself. But, if the project is the success that we hope it will be, we plan to establish other Africa Web Cams at other locations in KwaZulu Natal.
Using the South African example, it becomes clear that Africa has reason to seriously analyse and review the integration of virtual tourism into its overall tourist package to achieve sustainability and the signs from its tourist internet marketing strategies are that it is doing just this ( http://www.southafricawebcam.com/capetownwebcam/live_webcam.htm).
Conducting tourism as an e-business requires an associated platform of financial, regulatory and administrative skills and competences: assistance to local entrepreneurs and to tourist boards in developing such skills and establishing the necessary organisation for operating e-tourism is critical. In this respect, South Africa emerges very rapidly as a field leader.
4. Customising and controlling authenticity: a fine balance
So far in this short presentation, we have focused on the e-service dimension: the virtual tour of culture and nature and the charging for this tour in such a way that the revenue is firmly re-patriated to the African end of the business.
One benefit of the e-servicing is that neither nature nor culture are unduly disturbed by e-visitors. It can be argued that authenticity is retained and culture preserved by the absence of the physical audience - perhaps a benefit to sustainability is achieved in this way.
However, at this point we want to move onto the sale of African craft goods and products through e-business technology. One feature of the new information communication technology is that it can be used to 'customise' goods according to the desires of particular consumers: the traditional multi-coloured Bolgatanga basket of Ghana can find itself deprived of colour to service a more bland European market (http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/MARKETS/ghanaianbag.HTML. Revenue may be earned in this way but culture may be lost. Discussing the customisation of goods for external consumption with village women in India, one strong complaint from these women servicing the global craft market of e-tourism was that the colours they were now required to use gave them less pleasure in their needlework craft. Although, most Bolga baskets retain their colours and although no conversation has yet been had with Bolga basket makers about the impact of customisation on their creativity, it seems likely that the complaints of the women of Gujurat, as dependent on the income from this source of labour as they were, need to be heard within the framework of developing practices of e-tourism with extensive African on-line craft malls (Grieco, 2000) and are likely to also be found in Africa.
Achieving a balance between customisation and authenticity becomes a necessary goal for a fair trade approach: fair trade must contain space for the respect of local aesthetic values and not simply relate to the price of products.
5. Conclusion: sustainable journeys, sustainable tourism.
The virtual journey raises a set of sustainability questions not normally addressed within the literature. The growing importance of the virtual journey raises issues of regulatory and financial organisation which have yet to receive substantial development agency attention. The virtual journey as part of the toolkit to reduce the dependence of Africa on travel and transport decisions made elsewhere has much to commend it. Within this framework, issues of authenticity and aesthetics should receive explict consideration.
Africa has much to offer and it is important that the profit from these offerings should be retained within Africa and not leak out of the African tourist economy into the coffers of the large external institutions: we leave this short essay in the hands of Nelson Mandela. His handprints have been turned into lithographs marketed in the e-form: click here to meet the global reach of Mandela and reflect on the path to change.
References:
Anyumba,G.(2000)Internet tourism networks and marketing: a case study of the potential and gaps in the former Homelands of the Northern Province in South Africa. Information Technology and Tourism 3(1) 2000 15-25
Grieco, M. (2000) Kente connections: the role of the internet in developing an economic base for Ghana. in Ed. Hitchcock, M. Souvenirs: The material culture of tourism Ashgate: Aldershot.
Harrison, D. (2002)(Ed.) Tourism and the Less Developed World Issues and Case Studies. Oxford University Press.
Hitchcock, M., (2000)(Ed)Souvenirs: The material culture of tourism Ashgate: Aldershot, 2000.
Scottish Parliament (2002) Tourism e-business. http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/S1/whats_happening/research/pdf_res_brief/sb02-93.pdf
Relevant urls:
http://www.actsa.org/Tourism/packaging_fairer_deal.htm
http://www.africa900.com/virtualreality/exhibition_virtual_shop.htm
http://www.traveldailynews.com/new.asp?newid=13418&subcategory;_id=101
http://www.etourismnewsletter.com/ecommerce.htm#behaviour