Luxury lodges earn millions of dollars each year from foreign tourists looking for an exclusive African getaway. The tourism industry is growing into a juggernaut of the South African economy.
But critics have asked whether all the dollars flowing into the luxury lodges are benefiting South Africa as a country, or are they only filling the pockets of already wealthy businessmen? Do the communities in which the thousand-rand-a-night outfits operate see any of the tourists’ money flowing into their region?
It is true that these days more and more lodges are waking up to the fact that they cannot operate in a vacuum and ignore the plight of their neighbouring communities.
Indeed, it is bad business for them to ignore the environment they operate in, says Jennifer Seif, national coordinator of Fair Trade and Tourism in South Africa (FTTSA). Her outfit promotes sustainable and equitable tourism through the award of a special trademark to tourism businesses that comply with fair trade principles and criteria.
‘Outfits involved in their communities benefit so much more in the long term,” says Seif. She points to ‘pockets of excellence” within the luxury lodge industry such as Sabi Sabi Private Game Reserve, Rocktail Bay Lodge and Wilderness Safaris, Phinda Private Game Reserve, Jackalberry Lodge and Londolozi Game Reserve.
National parks
South African National Parks (SANParks) also encourages sound social practices from the luxury lodges operating concessions within national parks, says Seif.
As part of its commercialisation programme, SANParks grants concessionaires rights to use defined areas of land and infrastructure in national parks and the opportunity to build and operate tourism facilities over specific periods. But operators tendering for the concessions have to include plans for good social practices and equity in their bids.
If they break the promises outlined in their bid, they could be heavily fined and ultimately kicked out of the park. Luxury lodges already operating in the Kruger that have to subscribe to SANParks’s community empowerment rules include Imbali Safari Lodge, Hamilton’s Tented Camp, Rhino Post Safari Camp and the recently opened Singita Lebombo Game Lodge.
Wilderness safaris
‘Groups like Wilderness Safaris these days generally engage in new joint ventures with communities. Their partnerships focus specifically on community benefits,” says Seif.
Wilderness Safaris is in partnership with the kwaMqobela and Mpukane communities in northern KwaZulu-Natal, where it operates Rocktail Bay Lodge, a small, luxury coastal lodge in Maputaland. The communities provide services to the lodge, creating economic opportunities for local people.
‘Wilderness Safaris understands the need to uplift and empower communities living closest to the areas in which we operate. Wherever possible, we ensure that people from these communities derive benefits from wildlife-based tourism,” the company says in its policy brochure. ‘We recognised many years ago that communities who live in, or border on, wildlife areas have key conservation roles and undeniable rights.”
Some of the more common ways communities benefit from the luxury lodges include the donation of computers, the building of classrooms and the creation of jobs.
‘The most significant benefits to the poor clearly arise from direct employment within the tourism industry,” Seif says. ‘Waged staff from rural communities frequently support big families, who rely on these salaries to pay for food, clothing and schooling.”
The government has identified tourism as a key to help impoverished communities to sustain and empower themselves. It envisions a tourism industry build on sustainable development principles. If tourism is managed in the right way, the department says, it will stimulate job creation, rural development and poverty alleviation.
‘But for that to happen, we need more private-public partnerships and for outfits to become involved in supporting communities,” says Seif.
Responsible tourism
In March 2002 the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (Deat) published a set of national responsible tourism guidelines. These guidelines encourage tourism outfits to develop partnerships and joint ventures in which communities have a significant stake and, with the appropriate capacity-building, a substantial role in management.
‘Responsible tourism is about enabling local communities to enjoy a better quality of life, through increased socio-economic benefits and an improved environment,” says Johan Kotzé, the project leader of Deat’s responsible tourism guidelines. ‘It is also about providing better holiday experiences for guests and good business opportunities for tourism enterprises.”
Deat’s guidelines gave rise to the Responsible Tourism Handbook, produced and funded by the Greening the WSSD initiative this year. The handbook, aimed at hospitality businesses, provides practical examples and tips on how to operate more responsibly. The user-friendly handbook is divided into economic, social and environmental chapters.
Businesses are encouraged to buy locally made goods and to use services from locally owned businesses. The recruitment and employment of staff should be done in an equitable and transparent manner, and should maximise the proportion of staff employed from local communities. Sensitivity to host cultures should be considered.
Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Valli Moosa says responsible tourism allows tourists to meet local people and experience their culture and way of life, which makes their visit more meaningful and enjoyable. ‘We want responsible tourists to ask their hosts what they are doing to develop the local economy and protect the environment.”
Fair Trade and Tourism’s Seif adds that good practices by luxury lodges will automatically help their marketing. ‘Research undertaken over the past five years in many of South Africa’s key source markets shows that more and more tourists are concerned about the social and economic, as well as the environmental, impact of their travels.”
Anna Spenceley, a consultant in sustainable and responsible tourism and an associate of the International Centre for Responsible Tourism, agrees with Seif.
‘Tour operators internationally are increasingly demanding information about what companies are doing to uplift local people, so this is encouraging outfits to do more,” she says. ‘The business case for responsible tourism is there: it is increasingly attractive to international visitors. The question is, what do domestic travellers think [about choosing responsible tourism companies rather than a cheaper alternative]?”
Spenceley says the government is introducing innovative initiatives to encourage good practices. Besides SANParks encouraging empowerment, local procurement and equity in privatisation bids, Spenceley says the government’s responsible tourism guidelines have raised the bar.
Pro-poor tourism
Seif and Spenceley released a report earlier this year entitled Strategies, Impacts and Costs of Pro-Poor Tourism Approaches in South Africa, in which they examined the contributions tourism businesses are making to neighbouring communities.
They looked at luxury lodges including Sabi Sabi near the Kruger National Park, Phinda Private Game Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal and Jackalberry Lodge in the Thornybush Game Reserve. They interviewed local communities about their attitudes towards the lodges.
The general impression they got was that, while some of the communities were benefiting from tourism, most people still felt left out of the benefits the industry promised.
There were some positive scenarios, though: impoverished communities surrounding Phinda, for instance, were enthusiastic about the benefits they have received. The three communities neighbouring the reserve are plagued by rural poverty and illiteracy. Unemployment levels in individual communities in the area can be as high as 77%.
The report states that about 90% of the people living near Phinda believed the reserve was an important mainstay for their villages. Even more than 90% would not want Phinda to be closed down, ‘because it was important to protect wildlife and provided employment”.
In the communities adjacent to Jackalberry and Sabi Sabi, the interviewees were less enthusiastic about the benefits of tourism to their communities.
Jackalberry Lodge’s neighbours, the Timbavati community, remain impoverished and unemployment is rife. Spenceley writes that ‘the community has made little progress in promoting economic development based on local tourism potential”.
In the interviews conducted at Timbavati, 70% of the community said they did not depend on tourism and felt they could do without it. They did not experience employment benefits, and did not have a great deal of interaction with tourists or the industry.
About 16% of the community said the only employment opportunities in the area were at the game lodges, in jobs such as guides. But during the interviews two people noted that the lodge had provided the village with computers, and ‘therefore a link had been made between tourism and community benefits”. Three people said their children depended on game reserves for education.
About 5% of the Timbavati community blamed their leaders for the lack of benefits from tourism.
Sabi Sabi’s neighbours, the Huntington community, is a poor rural community of around 6 500 people within the Khosa Tribal Authority. Spenceley says there is a low level of employment and the community is mainly employed by the lodges within the neighbouring reserve.
This community also indicated that about 70% of its members did not depend upon tourism and could survive without it. Spenceley and Seif found that 60% ‘would not do anything differently if tourism were no longer there”. Of those who would alter their lives, the majority would work on agricultural farms.
The researchers say the perception of these communities that tourism had not changed their lives in any way should be seen in context. ‘The positive impacts of small, isolated tourism enterprises must be regarded in relation to the capacity of operations to make a dent in the types of problems faced by the rural poor.
‘When a small, 10-bed lodge such as Jackalberry is the only operation attempting to assist poverty alleviation in a neighbouring community of more than 11 000 people, it is not surprising that the benefits are not felt by many.”
Sabi Sabi
Patrick Shorten, managing director of Sabi Sabi, says tourism outfits cannot shirk their responsibilities towards their neighbouring communities. ‘Our partnership with the local communities is an important part of our social responsibility.
‘The majority of our staff is recruited in our neighbouring communities, and materials for ongoing construction and maintenance are procured locally. We also run several conservation training programmes aimed at local participation and involvement.”
FTTSA recently awarded Sabi Sabi their exclusive trademark, which acknowledges the outfit’s fair business practices in involvement in the local communities. It is only one of four tourism outfits in South Africa to have earned the trademark.
In the report she did with Spenceley, FTTSA’s Seif commends Sabi Sabi for offering a better wage than many similar operations. The outfit was also reportedly the first enterprise in the industry to agree to a minimum wage with unions.
‘The reserve gives their staff free loans for education and building houses. They also get medical aid, a pension fund, uniforms, housing, meals and gratuities from guests,” the report notes.
About 65% of Sabi Sabi’s services are sourced from the local area, creating job opportunities and enriching local communities by supporting their business enterprises. Sabi Sabi supports local vegetable-growing projects and provides food for the pigs of locals from its wet waste.
The Lillydale Environmental Centre was one of the projects that caught Seif’s eye in evaluating Sabi Sabi. The centre provides space for adult education, lifeskills training and educator training programmes.
Sabi Sabi donated R100 000 towards the renovation, electrification and stocking of the centre with computers and recreational equipment, and encouraged a donation from American Express. It also encouraged its guests to donate books, and the library has built up a substantial collection that includes fiction and educational books.
Shorten says Sabi Sabi’s partnership with the local communities extends beyond the centre, and the reserve is always looking for new initiatives that help out. For example, it sponsors the Huntington pre-school in a joint partnership.
Sabi Sabi also sponsors a programme in which groups of 16 underprivileged children are brought to its bush camp for eight months of the year, to teach them more about the bush. When game is culled, the outfit presents the local community with rations and two families a year are allowed to the reserve to harvest thatching grass for their houses.
‘Our philosophy is driven by the belief that a wildlife sanctuary will only survive economic and social pressures by creating employment, earning foreign currency, paying tax and promoting sustainable tourism,” Shorten says.
These practices have also earned Sabi Sabi kudos in the Imvelo Awards, which recognise the contributions of hospitality businesses to responsible tourism. Sabi Sabi won in the category Best Water Conservation Programme last year and was a finalist in the Best Environmental Management Programme category this year.
Phinda
Phinda Private Game Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal was the overall winner of the Imvelo awards last year. The reserve has succeeded in turning a degraded agricultural farm into a five-star wildlife venue with an innovative ecological rehabilitation programme.
The lodge employs about 250 people and 80% of the staff are locals. Phinda’s community development projects include a clinic, classroom facilities, training centres, an environmental centre, pre-primary school facilities and the making of community charcoal from bush-clearing.
Phinda’s community projects are run by the Africa Foundation. The foundation was established in 1992 as a non- profit organisation by the multinational ecotourism lodge operator, CCAfrica, which operates Phinda.
‘Our work done in the communities surrounding Phinda, in particular, is considered a model for integrated community and conservation development,” says Jacqui McNaughton, senior programme officer of the Africa Foundation. ‘By providing a channel for investment of capital and expertise in rural development projects and enterprises, the foundation promotes a more equitable distribution of the regional socio-economic benefits realised through ecotourism and its allied activities. Currently we are running six major ongoing programmes, along with 60 smaller short-term projects.”
Over the past 11 years, the foundation’s projects have raised close to R6-million through international and local grants for implementing programmes with the rural comm- unities neighbouring Phinda.
Phinda encourages schoolchildren to make their welcome notes for guests from high-quality recycled paper. A local sewing group is contracted by the lodge to make uniforms for staff.
In order to support education, Phinda has built 46 classrooms, three libraries and 18 pre-schools. Together with guests and other NGO partnerships, it has contributed books, laboratory equipment and computers to schools in the area.
The lodge has handed out 86 bursaries for tertiary studies, for courses as varied as teaching, environmental health, nature conservation and business. In return for bursaries, students are expected to contribute to their home communities for a year after studying.
Jackalberry
Even smaller lodges can make a big difference to their neighbouring communities, says Spenceley. Jackalberry Lodge offers only 10 tourist beds, but it has made a huge effort to help local residents.
The lodge funds environmental education for local children and sponsored two community members to train to become lecturers at the computer centre set up in the neighbourhood. Jackalberry donated computers and furniture, and upgraded security for the computer centre.
Spenceley says the huge demand by locals for jobs at Jackalberry, and at other tourism enterprises near Thornybush Game Reserve, led the general manager to suggest to the local Mnisi Tribal Authority that they should create a community-based employment agency.
Employment practices
Employment practices are important in building good community relations, says Seif.
‘At Rocktail Bay, the lodge manager approaches the local community leaders of two villages regarding candidates. The induna puts the names of interested villagers in a hat, and then draws a selection at random,” Spenceley says in the report.
The lodge manager interviews those chosen and the most suitable person is selected. This policy has led to a situation where 24 of the 29 staff are employed from the local communities.
Seif says a lot of work still needs to be done. ‘In general I think these ‘best cases’ are not typical of the industry as a whole,” she says. ‘Schemes like FTTSA and the Imvelo Awards are useful: they provide incentives for good practice by the private sector and raise awareness about fairness and responsibility within the industry.
‘I am sure as time passes more and more tourism outfits will begin to realise the immense value they add to their business by implementing fair practices. Hopefully, South Africans themselves will wake up and start supporting these businesses.”