Madagascar needs to decide how it wants to position itself as a tourist destination versus its more famous East African neighbors. The choice is simple, to cater to its traditional market of mostly French visitors who enjoy it as a good value beach resort and biodiversity ‘hotspot’ with extraodinary endemic wildlife (most famously lemurs and chameleons), or to reach out to wider UK and US markets with new tourism products.
In 2003 the President startled the world by announcing his intention to triple the area of Madagascar’s protected reserves to account for 10 percent of the country. Conservational International, with whom I am currently with in Madagascar along with a party of UK and US tour operators, have been asked to support the Government and Tourist Board in conservation and tourism planning.
There has been extensive consultation with local communities adjacent to these Parks, and one of the hopes is that income from tourism will improve their lives and create sufficient income for them to desist from cutting down their remarkable forests and illegal hunting.
I feel that the big trends in UK and US tourism are for real and authentic experiences rather than those created for tourism. We want to participate in both the cultural and natural heritage of places, for example no safari to Kenya is now complete without a community experience. In Madagascar this means learning how to spin silk, catch fish, sit with a village elder learning about their taboos (or fady), or find and identify wildlife rather than be spoon fed by a guide or guide book.
We also increasingly want to feel that our holiday is a responsible one that helps support local communities and conservation. In 2001 I wrote in this opinion column that culture was the sleeping giant of African tourism, and that a failure to identify and market this could partly explain why African tourism has grown so much more slowly than Asian tourism. After my time here I believe that there is nowhere that this is more true than Madagascar.
There are many great wildlife destinations around the world and competition is tough. To reach out to new markets beyond France, and to generate sufficient income for communities to make the Presidents conservation and development dream a reality, Madagascar must widen its appeal by embracing responsible tourism that brings together both its cultural and natural heritage. When it does this it will join the A league of African tourism destinations.
