The safari-industry is worriedly a-buzz with conversations about the scary, negative effects the Ebola outbreak is having on tourism and bookings. We take a look into what the experts are saying about it and what we’re seeing in our stats.
Just say the word “Ebola” around any safari or tourism connected person lately and see their eyes widen in fear as they twitch nervously. This isn’t because they fear for their health but they fear the repercussions the Ebola outbreak is having on the behaviour of travellers to Africa. They fear, particularly, the effects on these potential travellers’ mind-sets regarding African travel and whether they think it is safe to do so.
Escape Ebola in your own backyard. Come to Africa!
Unfortunately, many international travellers think of Africa as a country, not as a huge continent. This perspective is so damaging to African travel in this scenario as there exists the misconception that “Africa has Ebola”. This couldn’t be further from the truth!
Many tour operators, African tourism publications, organisations and tourism individuals are shouting from their African rooftops, telling travellers that this is not the case and that African safari regions are open for safe safari business as usual. [highlight] Africa Geographic [/highlight] (and a few other publications) posted a very telling and visually effective blog recently, showing Africa-interested travellers just how far away the Ebola pandemic is from most safari destinations in Africa.
It read:
If you’re going on safari, you are going to be a very, very long way from these countries – in many cases, even further from them than you were before you left home.
Here are some places that are closer to the Ebola outbreak than the popular safari countries, such as South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana and so on:
- London, England – 2 924 miles / 4 707km from Ebola
- Paris, France – 2 780 miles / 4 474km from Ebola
- Rome, Italy – 2 794 miles / 4 497km from Ebola
- Barcelona, Spain – 2 292 miles / 3 688km from Ebola
Is Ebola keeping you from travelling to these places?
“Only a crazy person would warn you against visiting Rome, London or Paris because of Ebola, yet they are both closer and receive a higher volume of West African travel than typical safari destinations.”
They then shared this map to give a realistic visual overview of where Ebola is, in relation to where most travellers would be heading when going on safari:
Perhaps Africa’s message of encouragement to international travellers should be, “Escape Ebola in your own backyard. Come to Southern and Eastern Africa!” It’s the tongue-in-cheek truth and makes staying away from Africa seem very silly indeed.
What the experts in the industry are saying:
[highlight] Safaribookings.com’s [/highlight] blog entitled “[highlight] The Unfortunate Impact of the Ebola Outbreak on the Safari Industry [/highlight]” shares the hard hitting stats on the subject and industry specialist’s opinions on the real-life effects they’re seeing happening at ground level.
A staggering decrease in bookings has been reported by many of the 500 safari operators interviewed. Some announcing an up to 70% drop noticed.
Here’s what some of the industry experts are saying about the Ebola situation:
Colin Bell: Wilderness Safaris CEO:
“I am surprised about how Ebola is affecting safari bookings to Africa… I guess some people think of Africa as a country and not a vast continent. It’s time for that perception to change!”
Brian Jackman: Travel Writer:
“I understand people are concerned, but if somebody sneezes in Sierra Leone you don’t catch a cold in Kenya. So put aside your worries about Ebola. Just get on the plane and enjoy the safari holiday of a lifetime.”
Daniel Njamwea: Owner of Lilac Adventures, Kenya:
“As of today, we have had 6 cancellations because clients felt they didn’t want to take the risk. The impact on our business is significant.”
Lizzie Williams: Guidebook writer
“… [T]he African tourism economy is more vulnerable than most other places – local jobs and wildlife conservation is almost immediately affected without much-needed tourism revenue.”
The Far Reaching Negative Effects of a Drop in Tourism to Africa
Brandon Presser wrote an eye opening and powerful [highlight] article [/highlight] about the further reaching effects a decline in visitors and tourism to African destinations can have. It’s a domino effect we all hope won’t happen, but the sad reality is that it is very possible if the unreasonable fear of Ebola keeps visitors away.
He shines some light on the dim scene:
[D]espite the concrete statistics detailing the general improbability of an outbreak, tourism numbers continue to fall—and not just in Kenya, the entirety of sub-Saharan Africa is buckling under visitor losses from North America and Asia.
He continued by pin pointing the dire repercussions a fall in tourism would have on wildlife too:
More vital, however, than the alarming reduction in tourism dollars is the direct impact that the impaired economy will have on wildlife conservation—fewer visitors means fewer rangers and conservation funds. The Ebola pandemic has led to an increase in poaching in Eastern and Southern Africa, where there’s a palpable and immediate link between traveler funds and park protection.
What WildWeb has noticed:
WildWeb’s digital marketing department has been stunned by the dramatic and unusual web visitor statistics changes seen on many of our safari-focused client’s websites and campaigns over the past couple of months. Many are reporting a decrease in organic and direct visitors in particular. This sways the visitor stats significantly as these two categories of visitors make up the majority of web visits to the sites naturally.
Definitions and Graph:
[highlight] Organic Traffic [/highlight]: Visitors referred by an unpaid search engine listing, e.g. a Google.com search.
[highlight] Direct traffic [/highlight]: Visitors who visited the site by typing the URL directly into their browser. ‘Direct’ can also refer to the visitors who clicked on the links from their bookmarks/favourites, untagged links within emails, or links from documents that don’t include tracking variables (such as PDFs or Word documents).
Average Direct Traffic & Organic Traffic flow for some African lodges’ websites in Zambia, Botswana, Malawi, South Africa and Kenya and Zimbabwe and Namibia
These behavioural trend changes coincide with the Ebola scare, almost absolutely and we are seeing them continue into November, for the most part, too. Other external factors which are specific to individual properties may come into play and some properties are not being affected by changes in trends at all but in general, interest in African destinations as holiday destinations seems to have waned. The usual mass of the Africa-interested travel target market just don’t seem to be looking online for information about African trips at the moment which is not in line with seasonal trends we’ve seen before.
The drop off in natural visits to some sites is especially noticeable from the UK and US.
When we have spoken to our client camps and lodges about this, many of them have mentioned that they have had a decline in bookings and even cancellations with Ebola being the given reason by guests for many of these.
Ebola on Google
We also conducted some keyword research using Google tools which gave us an indication of the Ebola related words people are putting into Google’s search engine lately. We were interested in exactly what they are concerned about and what they want to learn more about when thinking of travel and Ebola.
This is what we found:
We targeted the following geographic for the below research: UK, US, Western Europe, Australia, NZ, Canada etc.
|
Keyword |
Avg. Monthly Searches |
| ebola |
1830000 |
| [highlight] ebola in africa [/highlight] |
1600 |
| ebola outbreak in africa |
720 |
| ebola virus in africa |
210 |
| ebola outside africa |
90 |
| ebola information |
320 |
| [highlight] current news ebola [/highlight] |
260 |
| ebola west africa news |
70 |
| news about ebola |
170 |
| ebola history |
720 |
| [highlight] is it safe to travel to south africa now [/highlight] |
10 |
| the ebola virus |
880 |
| ebola virus disease |
720 |
| [highlight] latest news on ebola [/highlight] |
880 |
| [highlight] ebola prevention [/highlight] |
880 |
| latest news on ebola virus |
590 |
| [highlight] travel to africa ebola [/highlight] |
10 |
| where in africa is the ebola outbreak |
10 |
| [highlight] where is ebola in africa [/highlight] |
170 |
| [highlight] ebola in africa 2014 [/highlight] |
140 |
| [highlight] ebola outbreak in africa 2014 [/highlight] |
50 |
| ebola in africa facts |
10 |
| news africa ebola |
10 |
| ebola current news |
70 |
| [highlight] africa and ebola [/highlight] |
10 |
| [highlight] ebola free [/highlight] |
70 |
| ebola today |
210 |
| [highlight] ebola epidemic in africa [/highlight] |
20 |
| [highlight] ebola situation in africa [/highlight] |
10 |
| news ebola africa |
40 |
| [highlight] is there ebola in south africa [/highlight] |
50 |
| outbreak in africa |
90 |
| world news ebola |
30 |
| ebola and kenya |
20 |
| ebola reports |
20 |
| ebola outbreak areas |
30 |
| ebola spread africa |
10 |
(The terms that we found most interesting in terms of African travel and Ebola, are highlighted)
No results for these search terms found:
- Ebola safe in Africa
- Ebola safe travel
- Ebola safe safari
- safari with no Ebola
- Ebola free Africa getaway
- Ebola safe Africa vacation
- Africa holiday without Ebola
- Ebola-free safari
- Ebola free safari
It would seem that there is a real hype in searches for Ebola news and updates on the outbreak, making everyone wary of the continent as a side effect. However there is not much research being done online regarding people checking if African travel is Ebola-free or looking for options around that.
What to do about it all:
Some tour operators and properties are choosing to ride out the wave of Ebola negativity, just waiting for it to pass over before knuckling down to recover from the dip. It will pass. In the meantime, we at WildWeb are recommending our travel-focused clients try countering some of the impact of the Ebola scare in the following ways:
-Target your local markets who will not be deterred by Ebola as they understand it is no reason not to travel in unaffected African regions.
-Run local specials to fill beds
-Use social media to reassure your fans and community and to push your product and location
-Share the stats about Ebola and make it clear that travel to most of Africa, and your corner of it is very safe indeed. [highlight] The Pro-African, pro-travel #BeEbolaSmart campaign recently launched [/highlight] encouraging all those touched by this misdirected fear and hype to take a photo with one single Ebola fact printed or written down and then tweeted/Facebooked to [highlight] @Safari365 [/highlight]. This will then be shared through social media to help “create enlightenment, quell misgivings and swamp naysayers with cold, hard facts!”
-Hang in there! We’re all in this together.
