Picard, D. (2015). Making ecotourism sustainable: Refocusing on economic viability. Journal of Sustainable Tourism. doi: 10.1080/09669582.2015.1019512

Making ecotourism sustainable: refocusing on economic viability.Lessons learnt from the “Regional strategic action plan for coastalecotourism development in the South Western Indian Ocean”

David Picard*

Centre for Geographical Research, University of Lisbon (CEG-IGOT/UL), Lisboa, Portugal

(Received 20 March 2014; accepted 27 January 2015)

Ecotourism has become the focal point of a wide range of private and public sectordevelopment initiatives in the countries of the Western Indian Ocean. The 2008“Regional Strategic Action Plan for Coastal Ecotourism Development in the SouthWestern Indian Ocean” aimed at both a strategic assessment of current achievementsand the development of recommendations for policy action. Drawing on the researchdata initially gathered for this report, the article demonstrates the importance offostering criteria for ensuring medium and long-term economic viability in theassessment of sustainable ecotourism development performance, both at micro- andmacro-economic levels. The arguments are presented in the form of eight lessonslearnt, and the article approaches the question of economic viability at the differentlevels of enterprises, projects and products, and in terms of public policy and planning.

Keywords: economic sustainability; ecotourism; coastal planning; policy-making;Indian ocean

Introduction

The work discusses long-term economic viability as a crucial overarching condition forthe achievement of sustainable ecotourism in developing countries. It comes in a broaderpolicy context marked by the diffusion of organised mass tourism as a strategic develop-ment tool for poorer regions, and the growing concurrent awareness that such develop-ments need to be sustainable in the long run in order to achieve their goals (defined byframeworks such as the United Nations Millennium Development Goals). On the ground,the implementation of sustainable tourism development, and of ecotourism developmentas a specific form of tourism, has often been accompanied by the emergence of variousmultiple-stakeholder alliances, institutions and strategies linking private and public sec-tors and intertwining various local, national and regional polity scales.

One example of such increasingly common contemporary thinking and policy prac-tice is the Regional Strategic Action Plan for Coastal Ecotourism Development in theSouth Western Indian Ocean (hereafter referred to as the Plan) (Picard, 2008), developedand implemented by the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC). The IOC is an intergovern-mental organisation composed of the Indian Ocean island states of Seychelles, Comoros,Mauritius and Madagascar, and the French overseas department, La R!eunion. Created in1984, its main goals are cooperation in the fields of politics and economics, sustainablenatural resource development, and the strengthening of regional cultural identity. ThePlan is a framework document recommending actions in support of coastal ecotourism

*Email: [email protected]

! 2015 Taylor & Francis

Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 2015http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2015.1019512

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developments in the countries of the South Western Indian Ocean (hereafter referred to asSWIO).

The Plan was developed as part of the Regional Programme for the Sustainable Man-agement of the Coastal Zones of the Indian Ocean (ReCoMaP), an 18 million euroEuropeAid-financed programme from 2006 to 2011 (IOC, 2012). ReCoMaP’s overallaim was to contribute to the sustainable management and conservation of natural coastaland marine resources, and thereby to facilitate poverty alleviation amongst the coastalpopulation of SWIO countries (IOC, 2007). It included a broad spectrum of activities inthe field of tourism, but also in other topical areas, including the creation of national inte-grated coastal zone management committees and plans, the collection of data on coastalregions, the development of monitoring tools, the initiation of fisheries projects, the crea-tion of civil society organisations and training programmes and the pooling of informa-tion, along with examples of good practice. The seven countries involved were theComoros, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, the Seychelles, Somalia and Tanzania. Noactivities were undertaken in Somalia, due to the then unstable political situation in thatcountry.

At a technical level, the Plan was to assess, and where appropriate recommend sup-port for, existing and new ecotourism projects and programmes. It developed country-specific recommendations for ReCoMaP supported interventions. It also made recom-mendations for strategic actions with a wider SWIO scope, in particular with regard tothe work of the Regional Technical Advisory Committee on Tourism, an initiative estab-lished by the IOC. The Plan was implemented from 2008 to 2011 through the direct finan-cial support of development projects and strategic policy actions by national governmentsthat were submitted to the programme in the course of two open calls. More than 60 fieldprojects were funded directly; a series of national strategy level policy actions was alsosupported.

To develop the Plan, different stakeholders in each of the programme’s focus coun-tries were consulted. These stakeholders included representatives from the public sectorand the private sector, development cooperation agencies, academic institutions, and localand international non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The data generated were com-pleted and interrogated through a critical analysis of national tourism, environmental andeconomic development policy documents, as well as interviews and observations madeduring field visits in the coastal areas of each focus country. A fieldwork matrix was usedto ensure the coherence of this approach and the uniformity of data collection in eachfocus country. A destination benchmarking study added further information on interna-tional tourism flows, catalogue-based destination brand images and tourism profileswithin the SWIO.

The Plan was published on various websites, and has since become one of the mostdownloaded documents on coastal zone tourism development in the Western IndianOcean area. As the Plan’s author I took particular note of this marked interest by academ-ics and policy-makers.

This paper explains and critically analyses some of the observations and recommen-dations made in the Plan. In particular, it takes up the central issue of long-term economicviability as a condition of achieving sustainable ecotourism development at the level ofprivate enterprises, civil society, and policy and planning institutions. A myriad of proj-ects and policy programmes that I had assessed in the course of the work for the Plan hadmade the achievement of sustainable development through ecotourism activities a mainobjective. Yet, many of the stakeholders involved had showed little concern or capacityfor management to ensure the medium and long-term cost efficiency of their ventures.

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It seems common sense, however, that, as long as such projects and programmes losemoney in the long run, destroy natural resource bases or provoke urban degenerations,exclusions and decay, they do not constitute a solid base for sustainable development. Inthis sense, long-term economic viability is not only about micro-economic or public mon-etary accountancy, but also constitutes a more general baseline to achieve environmentaland social sustainability. Hence, I argue that where environmental economics and accoun-tancy approaches become more pertinent, and where considerations about the long-termeconomic performance of a company, country or society are assessed as criteria for thesocial well-being of its employees or citizens, then long-term economic viability can beunderstood as a far more inclusive barometer of sustainability in general.

The article discusses this idea in the form of eight lessons learnt, based on the data andconclusions of the Plan. The analysis concludes with a set of policy recommendationswhich draw on successful business and governance models observed in specific IndianOcean countries.

The wider context: ecotourism as a tool for sustainable development

During the first decade of the 21st century, the SWIO destinations of Mauritius, the Sey-chelles and Zanzibar were among the most esteemed tropical island destinations for theEuropean outbound market. At the same time, through its borders with East and SouthAfrica, the SWIO region encompassed some of the leading wildlife and safari destinationsworldwide. With almost seven million tourist arrivals annually, South Africa, which is notpart of the ReCoMaP focus countries, represented the largest tourism destination in theregion (Picard, 2010a). It was followed by Kenya (928,000 arrivals), Mauritius (692,000arrivals) and Tanzania (467,000 arrivals). In the same period, Zanzibar (C65%), Mada-gascar (C61%), Kenya (C53%) and Tanzania (C37%) saw the most important increasesin the number of tourist arrivals, while La R!eunion and the Comoros encountered stagna-tions or decreases. The most important markets for SWIO countries were then France, theUnited Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and Italy.

The majority of the SWIO products offered by international tour operators were posi-tioned in the upper and top-end product ranges (according to a holiday brochure bench-marking study carried out as part of the Plan). With the exception of the budget, all-inclusive beach holiday products offered in Kenya and increasingly also in Zanzibar, alldestinations were promoted through images of exclusiveness and the quality of their pris-tine natural environments. Zanzibar, the Seychelles and Mauritius were identified asexclusive beach and sun destinations; Tanzania, Kenya, Madagascar and La R!eunion aswildlife and mountain destinations; and Kenya and Madagascar as exploration and cul-tural tourism destinations.

Political efforts to boost tourism development in the SWIO came in a wider context,in which many traditional sectors ! agriculture, fisheries, the spice trade and textilemanufacturing ! found themselves in crisis. From the 1990s, most national governmentsidentified tourism (and ecotourism in particular) as a potential major growth sector. Insome countries, such as Kenya, Mauritius, Zanzibar and the Seychelles, the successfulimplementation of tourism master plans subsequently led to a significant growth of thesector and of related incomes. Other countries were less successful, and many develop-ment initiatives claiming to be forms of ecotourism (some of which were celebrated assuccess stories by the international development community) that I observed were eitherhardly or non-operational, and hence practically unsustainable. By contrast, larger tour-ism investments in the more successful countries, especially those made by international

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hotel brands ! which few people would associate with ecotourism ! often created condi-tions that responded to the International Ecotourism Society’s definition of the term, andeffectively supported the development of sustainable tourism economies.

This paradoxical observation is part of a wider academic field interested ! and oftenentangled ! in the planning of sustainable development through tourism. The first majorworks in this specific field emerged during the 1980s, in the context of renewed efforts byinternational political decision-makers ! meeting at the World Commission on Environ-ment and Development ! to create guidelines for actions for the sustainable future ofhumanity and the planet (Bramwell & Lane, 1993; Butler, 1999; Clarke, 1997; G€ossling,Hall, & Weaver, 2008; Gunn & Var, 2002; Hall, 2008; Inskeep, 1991; Weaver, 2006). Icategorise the adapting of the new concept of sustainability to the field of tourism devel-opment into two loosely opposed views: one “‘pragmatic” and the other “romantic”(Beyer & GIZ, 2014; Liu, 2003; Rauschelbach, 2011; Sharpley, 2000). Both views havesince undergone semantic shifts, most recently emerging in the forms of “pro-poor” and“responsible” tourisms (Ashley, Roe, & Goodwin, 2001; Chok, Macbeth, & Warren,2007).

The authors defending what I call the pragmatic view are mainly interested in usingtourism development as a tool to achieve the three aims of sustainability: social equity,economic viability and preservation of environmental resources (Hunter, 1995; Lordkipa-nidze, Brezet, & Backman, 2005; Swarbrooke, 1999). This approach was initiallyanchored in the polity formats of international development and development cooperationorchestrated by international organisations such as the IMF and the World Bank (Hunter,1997; Lanfant, 1980). During the 1990s and 2000s, different indicators were created tomeasure the degree of achievement of the three overarching goals of sustainable develop-ment (Miller & Twining-Ward, 2005; Pigram &Wahab, 2005), especially economic indi-cators measuring micro-economic performance. The creation of indicators determiningsocial and environmental impacts proved far more difficult (Tsaur, Lin, & Lin, 2006). Anew discipline, environmental economics, adopted a micro-economic approach to mea-sure the economic value and productivity of environmental services provided by naturalenvironments such as forests or coral reefs (Becken & Patterson, 2006; G€ossling, 2000;Hunter & Shaw, 2007). Similar, though usually less operational, attempts were made toassess the impact of tourism on social environments (Cole, 2006). More recently, severalsustainability label initiatives driven mainly by civil society and private certificationcompanies have tackled this issue relatively successfully (Font & Buckley, 2001;Rivera, 2002).

The academics and practitioners defending a more romantic view on sustainable tour-ism seem mostly less concerned with a planned approach to the long-term economic viabil-ity of projects and programmes (Butler, Hall, & Lew, 1998). Often defending a grass-rootsapproach underpinned by what authors like John Urry (Urry & Larsen, 2011) call a“romantic gaze” upon local communities and (presumably) on socially embedded land-scapes, these authors frequently claim ecotourism to be a micro-local approach rootedwithin the social structures of community life (Stronza, 2001; Taylor, 1995). Many of theseworks, and their applications in the field of development cooperation, prove problematic byexoticising local populations, projecting them as Western community utopias rooted for themost part in European theological and philosophical allusions to a biblical heaven or aHobbesian pre-modern state of eternal nature (Cater, 2006; Frenzel & Koens, 2012; Gutten-tag, Butcher, & Raymond, 2012; Picard, 2011; Salazar, 2010; Picard & Di Giovine, 2014).

In reality, social life at this micro-local scale is in most cases far more heterogeneousthan this idealised vision, and it is often barely democratic, instead often being dominated

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variably by powerful families, entrepreneurs, clerics and other patrons (Kontogeorgopou-los, Churyen, & Duangsaeng, 2014; R!egi, 2012, 2013; Richards & Hall, 2003; Simpson,2001; Sofield, 2003). Also, as in most global contexts, the “local” within “localcommunity” artificially and mostly unnecessarily defines a moral hierarchy between dif-ferent people living in a same place, discriminating in particular against foreigners andmigrants (Picard, 2011). Action towards “local” development is here often inscribed inwhat Clifford (1989) defines as a salvage paradigm, pursuing the preservation of localcultural practices and built environments and their protection against what many candidlyclaim as the “destroying” or “polluting” effects of contact with modernity (Croall, 1995;Greenwood, 1989) ! while local populations actually mostly want to participate in thismodernity brought in from outside (LiPuma, 2001; MacCannell, 1992; Zeppel, Hall, &Lew, 1998).

In many academic works, both views come, to varying degrees, to the forefront andget entangled, and sometimes combined. In a recent work, Weaver (2014) suggests inte-grating what he calls conventional mass tourism with alternative tourism, which echoesmy dichotomy of pragmatic versus romantic approaches. While identifying a series ofcontradictions inherent to the distinction between mass and alternative tourism, Weaverequally recognises the need to integrate ecotourism into mainstream tourism. He callsthis “enlightened mass tourism”, combining the ethics of the romantic approach with theeconomies of scale of conventional tourism. It is in this pragmatic spirit of repositioningthe romantic motifs underlying much of the ecotourism field, and of transforming theminto a “sustainable livelihood strategy” (Tao & Wall, 2009) tool, that I return to the data Igathered when preparing the Plan. They are discussed here in the form of eight key les-sons learnt.

Lesson 1: ecotourism needs to be integrated into a sustainable development policy

Similar to various other contexts, in the countries of the SWIO, the term “ecotourism”was used to define a broad range of activities, products and development concepts(Blamey, 2001; Bottrill & Pearce, 1995; Carrier & Macleod, 2005; Fennell & Dowling,2003). Most tourists and international tour operators interviewed in the course of thisstudy affirmed a generic vision of ecotourism as a particular type of low-impact form oftravel through natural environments and encounters with wild fauna and flora (Clifton &Benson, 2006). In response to this demand, a large number of tourism development proj-ects, programmes and products in the SWIO have started to claim ecotourism as their phi-losophy, product or brand label. These include upmarket “eco-lodges”, hotels with acorporate social responsibility (CSR) programme, guesthouses claiming to embody “localauthenticity”, charitable and philanthropic enterprises aiming at “helping thecommunity”, hotel supply market access projects for local produce, and community-runtourism infrastructures and sites.

“Ecotourism” was also used, in some cases as an overarching development concept,and in other cases interchangeably with “sustainable tourism” (Wall, 1997; Wight, 1993).Some national tourism development plans, for instance in the Seychelles, Kenya and Tan-zania, situate ecotourism at the heart of national and territorial development and brandmarketing plans (Republic of Kenya, 2007; Republic of Seychelles, n.d.; RevolutionaryGovernment of Zanzibar, n.d.; United Republic of Tanzania, 2006). In the archipelagosof Zanzibar, Mauritius and Comoros, the national development plans define ecotourismas a means to develop the less developed and less densely inhabited parts of the nationalterritories ! respectively, the islands of Pemba, Rodrigues and Moh!eli (cf. Government


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of Mauritius, 2007; Union des Comores, 2011; United Republic of Tanzania, 2003). Asimilar tension between densely urbanised tourism clusters and geographically (and oftenalso socially) more marginal spaces reserved for ecotourism activities is equally observedin terrestrial territories such as La R!eunion or Tanzania, with the mountainous areas andinner valleys of La R!eunion and the far-off areas of the southern tourist route in Tanzaniabeing proclaimed as ecotourism destinations (Conseil R!egional de La R!eunion, 2011; Pic-ard, 2010b; United Republic of Tanzania, 2003).

To generate consistent tourism development policies and plans, it is helpful to havethe different stakeholders involved agree on a common language and conceptual under-standing (Donohoe & Needham, 2006; Scheyvens, 1999). It makes little sense whennational governments, NGOs or regional authorities invent their own concepts that,sooner or later, collide with the definitions used at international level (Stronza & Gordillo,2008). Also, the integration of “ecotourism principles” in the Johannesburg Plan ofImplementation (UN, 2002) and the continued stress on “ecotourism” as a developmenttool by the United Nations (UN, 2011) are unhelpful, as ecotourism does relate to a spe-cific form of tourism, rather than to a consistent development concept. The InternationalEcotourism Society (IES) defines ecotourism as “a socially responsible travel to naturalareas that conserves the environment and sustains the well being of local people” (IES,2007). In this sense, it is a particular type of tourism activity geared toward natural areas.

“Sustainable tourism development” instead defines a development concept integratingthe three grand principles of sustainability ! economic and social development and envi-ronmental protection ! as initially outlined in the Report of the World Commission onEnvironment and Development (World Commission on Environment and Development,1987). In the field of tourism policy, the definition of sustainable development has beenbroken down in the Global Code of Ethics for Tourism by the United Nations WorldTourism Organisation (UNWTO, 1999). From here, the notion of “ecotourism”, whentaken seriously, certainly incorporates the guiding principles of sustainable development.Yet, it does not automatically equate to sustainable tourism. Other, different forms oftourism that are not ecotourism ! for example urban and cultural tourism, religious tour-ism, medical and social tourism, and even beach mass tourism ! can equally contributeto sustainable development (Beaumont, 2001; Filion, Foley, Jacquemot, Munasinghe, &McNeely, 1994).

Moreover, not all activities assessed here that used ecotourism or policies in order toclaim sustainable development as their points of reference actually respected the basicprinciples underlying their respective concepts. For instance, many aggressively marketed“ecotourism” products did not involve local people in any equitable manner, and manydid not actually preserve natural environments. Instead, they pursued short-term, profit-making visions with little concern for the very environments which provided theirresource base. Examples include organised forms of boat-based dolphin watching or theerection of fences and other obstacles to keep wild animals in certain areas visited bytourists.

Conversely, many large-scale hotels run by international or national hotel groupscatering for international charter tourists implemented the principles of ecotourism, andactively contributed to sustainable economic, social and environmental development,including community programmes and training, and employing local people and sharingaccess to fresh water. In many cases, these hotels used best available practices in terms ofwater use or waste and water treatment, and frequently they went beyond national envi-ronmental regulations. They also respected national labour laws, used local supply mar-kets and employed and trained permanent local workforces. Some of these large hotels

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won national and international ecotourism prizes for their CSR programmes, resourcepreservation measures and commitment to community development. Also, by providingon-the-job training and internal company tourism training programmes, many of theselarger companies were crucial in building professional capacities. A high percentage ofthe managers and owners of smaller guesthouses, restaurants and tour companies whowere interviewed had learnt their trade in larger international hotels and tourism agencies.

The often-made assumption that mass tourism based on a “sea and sun” model onlycreates minimum wage jobs, destroys natural environments and does not provide benefitsto local people, therefore, needs to be reconsidered (cf. also Beaumont, 2001; Tampe &Lengenfeld, 2007). In countries such as the Seychelles, Kenya, Tanzania and Mauritius,it is precisely this kind of tourism that generates a large part of the national GDP (throughcorporate tax, income tax and the multiplication effect of revenue spending), and hence,indirectly contributes to the running of public infrastructure, including schools, hospitals,public transport, public security and asset preservation programmes. It also creates thenecessary conditions (e.g. through air transport facilities and capacity, international brandmarketing and professional capacity building) for smaller scale tourism and ecotourismactivities to become economically viable.

The Plan shows that the absence of such larger scale tourism and accommodationfacilities makes it difficult or even impossible for smaller scale tourism or ecotourismactivities to become sustainable. A shift towards ecotourism, as suggested in somenational development plans, must therefore not mean, for instance, closing down the 300large-scale hotels on Kenya’s East coast and transforming them into community-run treehuts. Rather, it must mean working towards the integration of ecotourism activities in cur-rent and future tourism developments and the mainstreaming of sustainable developmentprinciples in national and local policy frameworks; a suggestion that reiterates Weaver’s(2014) argument for a more “enlightened mass tourism”. In this sense, the understandingof ecotourism as a tool of local and community development needs to go beyond a simpleblack-and-white vision, where community projects are automatically seen as good andlarge-scale mass tourism projects are seen as bad (Guttentag et al., 2012). In most con-texts, the two concepts are complementary; they work together at different scales ofnational and local tourism policy, and help to diversify and integrate tourism activities.Local tourism products and policies only become viable once they generate sustainablerevenues for the companies, states and employees involved (Kontogeorgopoulos et al.,2014; Krueger, 2005; Stem, Lassoie, Lee, Deshler, & Schelhas, 2003; Weaver, 1999;Wunder, 2000). This can only be achieved when they are integrated with actual tourismmarkets, resource preservation polices and sustainable development programmes atnational and international level. This requires strategic planning.

Lesson 2: sustainable development is conditioned by strategic planning

Tourism development heavily relies on sound strategic planning at public policy level(Gunn & Var, 2002; Hall, 2008; Inskeep, 1991). Where such strategic planning is ineffec-tive, even very pertinent ecotourism products have little chance to effectively contributeto sustainable development. This is the case for the islands of the Comoros, Pemba andRodrigues and the south coast of Tanzania, where small-scale ecotourism developmentpolicies have been implemented and a large number of smaller, locally owned hospitalityenterprises created. Despite this expansion, overall bed capacity remains very low. Noneof these destinations appear in the travel brochures of the main international tour opera-tors. Despite all good political intentions to boost a locally owned ecotourism economy,


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including marketing actions at international tourist fairs, these destinations will have nochance to develop any form of economically sustainable tourism as long as bed capacitiesremain low. The limited flow of regular tourism arrivals and limited airport facilities (e.g.short runways, limited security technology, etc.) do not make it profitable for air transportcompanies to plan regular flights. The development of tourism is consequently locked ina vicious circle. Limited airport capacities do not entice investors to develop additionalhotel bed capacities, and limited hotel bed capacities do not encourage air transport com-panies to programme more flights.

Similar issues beset sea and land transport capacities in countries where the principalcentres of tourism interest are far distanced from the international airports. Where roadsare difficult (e.g. Madagascar) or sea transport is only a marginal option (e.g. Comoros),it is certainly possible to develop forms of adventure, volunteer or study tourism. How-ever, these types of niche tourism are usually marginal in terms of generating directincomes, local employment or macro-economic revenues. With the exception of certaintourism routes (e.g. the taxi brousse route along the RN7 in Madagascar), they do not pro-vide a constant flow of tourists that would enable regular tourism activities and employ-ment in the tourism sector. To address such structural issues, it is important to assess,and, where judged appropriate, publicly subsidise the construction of airports and othertransport infrastructures, or even to co-finance the building and running of larger hotels toensure the minimum overall hotel bed capacities in a given locale. If ecotourism is to con-tribute to the sustainable development of countries and regions, the fields of transport,training, marketing and investment facilitation need to be articulated in some form of stra-tegic planning.

One way of doing this is to start with the planning of the job market. If a governmentprojects a hypothetical number of, say, 5000 people who need employment in the hotelindustry, it makes sense to calculate the number of hotels needed to employ this numberof people. Knowing the approximate staff-per-room ratio in different hotel types (by cate-gory) in developing nations, and the typical distribution of hotels in terms of their typesand sizes, it is possible to estimate this number. In the countries of the SWIO, the staff-per-room ratio varies according to countries and within countries, generally meeting ref-erence values for developing countries of 0.2!0.4 in three star hotels, 0.8!1.0 in fourstar hotels and 1.2!1.6, and in some cases up to 2.5 and more, in four star hotels (Forta-nier & Van Wijk, 2010; Goodwin, 2006). According to our research for the Plan, the dis-tribution of hotel types in the more developed tourist destinations with an upmarketimage in the SWIO (Mauritius, Zanzibar and Seychelles) roughly follows a 30!40!30rule, corresponding to approximately 30% three star hotels, 40% four star hotels and 30%five star hotels. In more upmarket destinations such as the Seychelles, it is noticeable thatthere are fewer or no three star hotels. If one assumes, for the sake of this demonstration,medium values as above, and a hypothetical average hotel capacity of 80 rooms for anyof the three hotel types, one can easily calculate the number of each hotel type needed tocreate jobs for 5000 people. Due to the income-multiplying effect of new hotel activitiesand the creation of indirect jobs in the tourism and hotel supply chain, the actual numberof newly created jobs is, in reality, much higher (M!eheux & Parker, 2006; Strietska-Ilina,2005).

Once information on occupancy rates, average length of stay, seasonality and numberof tourists per room is available, one can then easily estimate the number of additionaltourist arrivals needed to fill these hotels and create 5000 direct jobs (cf. Figure 1). Basedon such an estimate (which can easily be adapted to specific country contexts and indexedon seasonality), a national tourist board can develop a marketing strategy to attract the

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necessary additional tourists. At the same time, governments can calculate minimumcapacity requirements for airports and general transport facilities, identify the carryingcapacity of excursion sites and tourist routes, verify the availability of adequate land plotsfor hotel investors, and develop tourism and hospitality training facilities.

Lesson 3: ecotourism products need to adapt to consumer demand

Even though it is possible to quantitatively plan the types of investment needed to create acertain tourism development, it is far trickier to establish where to put new hotels, how todecorate them, or to decide what kinds of sites or leisure activities to offer. If ecotourismresponds to a specific concern by tourists with “nature”, defined by certain aestheticaspects of landscape (Picard & Zuev, 2014), the hotel’s architecture and design and theoffered tourist activities must consider the wider cultural and ideological aspect of con-sumer demand, and adapt to it.

It can be observed that during the late 2000s, new types of hotels and tourist products,based on a more individualist and more embodied concept of experience, often looselyassociated with the term of “ecotourism”, emerged throughout the SWIO region. Many ofthese new developments adopted a novel type of patchwork design, combining romanti-cised Africanist forms, colours and materials, Orientalist architecture, Feng Shuielements, European slow food gastronomy, and low-tech equipment (based usually onhigh-tech knowledge, for example on treating rain water, the use solar power or generat-ing biogas) (Hobson, 1994). In this context, ecotourism seems to have become a particularexpression, in the field of travel, of a wider eco-chic fashion in the Western world. More-over, the public opinion and consumer-driven demand for ecotourism and sustainableproducts, mediated by many of the European outbound tour operators, has led most of thelarger hotel groups assessed here to integrate principles such as community developmentor equitable use of resources into their operational management systems. From the late2000s onward, many European tour operators made compulsory the minimal social andenvironmental compliance of their business partners in the destinations, certified throughdifferent labelling and certification initiatives. From a medium-term perspective, some ofthe SWIO states are likely to enforce these hitherto voluntary frameworks as nationalpolicies.

To a certain extent, the mainstreaming of such an “ecotourism-style” and of sustain-ability principles was also perpetuated in the design and planning of wider tourist

Figure 1. Additional tourist arrivals needed to create 500 direct jobs.


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territories and destinations. The spatial development plans of the small island destinations! La R!eunion, Mauritius, Seychelles, and to a lesser extend Zanzibar and Comoros ! thathad emerged since the late 1990s, reformulated and literally rearranged the island land-scapes in terms of large ecotourism gardens that could be touristically visited and con-sumed (Picard, 2011). In a way, the model of the hotel garden was extended to the entireterritory of these islands. While it is interesting, sociologically, to explore what this newtype of hotel and spatial development design can tell us about the changes in tourist con-sumer culture and society at large (Picard & Buchberger, 2014; Picard & Robinson,2012), it can be stated unequivocally that these changes were carried into the destinationsfrom outside.

This also applies to the many NGO-driven initiatives to train local people to producesouvenirs or offer excursion activities for the tourists. Such initiatives can only be sustain-able once the products respond to consumer demand and are effectively brought to themarket. This requires artisanal and management skills, an understanding of tourist tasteand a form of quality control on behalf of the producers. Most successful producersencountered in the course of work on the Plan had benefited from organised training.Most had then developed practical knowledge about what tourists like to buy. Severalhandicraft workshops run by locals, Masai migrants or westerners that we visited inUnguja, the main island of Zanzibar, and in the Malindi area along the Kenyan coast,have started artisanal mass production, employing workers and, in some cases, even trad-ing larger volumes with European- or Mauritius-based curio dealers. In other cases, suchprojects were less successful. Even after years of financial and technical sponsorship,products such as candles or soap did not meet minimum standards and were, to the disap-pointment of their producers, rejected by tourists and the managers of the hotel souvenirshops. In other situations, the locally produced goods or services were actually of ade-quate quality, but their producers had little or no idea about how to bring them to market.Frequently, little effort was put into approaching tourism agents, tour operators, curioresellers or guide book authors to promote these products to existing tourism clienteles.

In many cases, ecotourism infrastructure (e.g. bungalows and boardwalks) whosedevelopment and design had been supported by international donor programmes could befew in number or non-operational and/or poorly managed. Village management commit-tees, purposely set up in some cases to run such infrastructure, seemed barely capable ofeffectively marketing the products, with this needed to ensure the necessary capitalisationto maintain material assets or the quality of the products. Yet, in many cases, public sectorsponsored labelling or licensing systems and the provision of dedicated tourist souvenirsales spaces and professional training were simple tools that could generate the necessaryconditions for producers to effectively adapt to consumer demand.

Lesson 4: good governance through inclusive national brand marketing

All countries of the SWIO have developed national and sometimes also regional brand-marketing strategies. These usually include slogans and key visuals summarising thenational tourism product, while at the same time showcasing “what the nation has tooffer”. In such cases, sites and heritage resources valorised for tourism consumption havealso become markers of national identity. They work as a mirror both for tourists andlocal populations, and facilitate the validation of particular interpretations of nationalidentity and history. In most countries visited here, especially those with longer estab-lished hospitality sector traditions, tourism has long been part of their nation-building pol-icies (Picard, 2010b). National animal icons, such as the elephant for Tanzania, the turtle

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for the Seychelles, the dodo for La R!eunion and Mauritius and the lemur for Madagascar,functioned as crucial identifiers for the places by international tourists.

The design of tourism marketing images, however, can also reinforce internal socialor geographical marginalisation within the destinations (cf. Picard, Pocock, & Trigger,2014). In some cases, ethnic or social minorities are only marginally (or not at all) consid-ered by national tourism promotion campaigns, visuals and slogans. They remain largelyinvisible to the tourist eye or are objectified as aesthetic elements of the visual landscape.Rural and coastal fishing populations, for instance, often suffer from being considered asliving elements of the wider landscapes as images embodying a trope of timeless back-wardness and cultural authenticity. This also applies to the ways in which particular socialand ethnic groups are displayed in tourism marketing campaigns, often symbolising andnaturalising internal social hierarchies and exclusions within destination countries.

In other cases, entire territories are marginalised within national tourism promotionand development polices. This is particularly the case for what can be called the “poor lit-tle sister islands” (e.g. Moheli in the Comoros, Pemba in the Zanzibar archipelago andRodrigues in Mauritius), which sometimes appear systematically marginalised bynational development strategies and programmes. Seen from a more political perspective,the preservation of rural activities and lifestyles, the promotion of traditional fishingequipment and the conservation of natural landscapes programmes are part of the globalpolicy format of ecotourism development. Yet, they supply the political centres of devel-oping countries with powerful tools to institutionalise the marginalisation of its internalperipheries. In a paradoxical way, the ecotourism agenda legitimises “keeping” rural andcoastal peoples and territories in relative poverty and in relations of dependency on thericher and politically more powerful main islands. As has also been documented for otherareas of the world, ecotourism can thus work as a political instrument to perpetuate inter-nal core/periphery relationships and related social and geographical marginalisation (cf.Boissevain, 1979 and Chaperon & Bramwell, 2013 for Malta; Weaver, 1998 for Trinidad& Tobago and Antigua & Barbuda).

For all the countries observed here, the sentiment of exclusion by specific populationshas induced forms of resistance, sometimes targeting the material symbols of tourism(e.g. newly planted palm trees and vandalism of tourism sites) and sometimes touriststhemselves. For many people I talked to, it seemed difficult to identify with tourism asthe provider of their daily bread and butter. This was also reflected by a certain resistanceto working in the tourism and hotel industry. Many, especially those who did not haveaccess to tourism activities themselves, often did not understand why tourists seemed tospend their time “sleeping at the beach” or looking at “odd” landscapes or animals (quotescollected in Pemba island).

It is the role of governments to make political decisions about the fate and future ofthe entire population they represent. Good governance in the context of ecotourism devel-opment must therefore aim at being inclusive, and at promoting formulations of the nationthat allow all citizens to partake and be represented. It also must allow citizens to beaware of, and feel comfortable with, the economic sectors that are at the base of a largepart of their livelihood.

Lesson 5: higher senior-level tourism planning capacity leads to better policyimplementation

While all governments in the SWIO have developed strategic plans that follow a processsimilar to that demonstrated in Lesson 3, their implementation is frequently hampered by


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the limited professional planning and management capacity of senior tourism ministryand directorate staffs. In the more successful countries, i.e. Mauritius, the Seychelles andLa R!eunion, these staff have specialised qualifications at MSc/MA level and industryexperience, providing a very good comprehension of the technical language, rationalesbehind and implementation procedures of tourism policies. In most of the less successfulcountries, the general level of tourism-specific education at senior government level isrelatively low. In both types of cases, a direct link can be made between the level ofsenior staff capacity and professional qualification and the way tourism developmentplans are put into practice.

This observation equally applies to the international development cooperation com-munity and most international NGOs. In many cases, these development policy stake-holders are struggling to understand the basic working principles of the internationaltourism industry. Many donor or NGO supported projects fail because of flawed projectplanning and design. Many newly developed products are simply not articulated with thetourism market. Also, the often slapdash training of local entrepreneurs and co-develop-ment of tourism products by non-tourism specialists frequently lead to economically andsocially non-sustainable tourism activities.

In the mid-2000s, countries such as Tanzania adopted a policy of systematicallyincreasing the level of their senior technical policy staff by providing them with special-ised postgraduate training. In line with this observation, one of the recommendations ofthe Plan was to directly support professional capacity building at senior government andNGO level (e.g. through MA/MSc study bursaries, training workshops and study visits),but also to encourage tourism sector related training-the-trainers and professional curricu-lum building programmes in the SWIO countries.

Lesson 6: best practices in the co-management of land, resources and incomes

The wealth created by ecotourism activities is based, to a very large extent, on the intangi-ble qualities that different tourists attribute to natural landscapes. At the same time,accommodation infrastructures, transport companies and diverse tourism activities gener-ate the major part of economic income. In most countries of the SWIO, the productivevalue of natural landscapes is remunerated only indirectly through licence and entrancefees, business taxes and indirect incomes generated by the tourism sector.

The general economic dilemma of income redistribution is amplified by contexts ofuncertain land ownership, often marked by the co-existence of different customary, colo-nial and postcolonial land tenure systems, especially in the least developed countries ofthe SWIO region. For hotel and tourism investors, it is sometimes not clear how toapproach this issue in a fair way. In some cases, villages or villagers seem to sell land toinvestors, but within the conception of local land tenure systems, without considering thatit will be sold forever. In other cases, investors arrange long-term land leases of publicland, sometimes with the obligation to compensate villagers who had planted on thisland. The more experienced investors encountered in research for the Plan seemed toengage in both types of approaches, hence working within both local customary and gov-ernmental public policy land tenure systems.

In countries like Kenya andMauritius, private!public partnerships and co-managed trustfunds involving community, tourism industry and public sector actors seem to provide anoperational land co-management model at the local level. InMadagascar and Tanzania, recentlegal frameworks have attempted to consider de facto customary governed public land, whichtakes the form of a right to a land certificate in Madagascar and a specific category of

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communal land property in Tanzania. Moreover, some of the NGO or private sector initiatedsustainable tourism label initiatives have picked up and addressed the land right issue.

However, local communities are usually not in a position to fairly consider the eco-nomic value of land either sold or leased for tourism activities. Nor is it clear to themhow tourists’ use of customary communal land or seashores is to be remunerated. Inmany cases observed, the land deals were unfair, frequently leading villagers to sell forrelatively low amounts, and preventing them from preserving their stake in the future eco-nomic revenues generated by tourism. Similar issues appeared with the development ofnational parks managed by governmental park authorities or NGO subcontractors.Despite the existence of often-complex redistribution models, incomes generated by theseparks were usually limited, and did not effectively flow back to the communities living inor around such parks. The problem of redistributing tourism incomes proved even morecomplex, where the governance of such parks was given to community-run associationsor enterprises. Often advocated by international donor programmes, such forms ofresource management frequently lead to tensions and unrest within village communitiesand the wider areas in which they live, most notably when different stakeholders orgroups claim authority within a given locale.

Projects that seem to work effectively mostly rely on partnerships between three keyactors: community stakeholders, the tourism industry and government agencies. In ourstudy, for the cases where the tourism industry was not implicated, the projects were gen-erally not viable in economic terms. Furthermore, in cases where government agencieswere not involved, legal regulations were not usually enforced. Finally, in cases wherethe community was not involved, or involved in a partial or inequitable way, projects andproducts contributed little to the generation of alternative livelihoods and the achievementof poverty alleviation objectives. The Plan therefore strongly advocates public!private!community partnerships as a model to make ecotourism sustainable. To guaran-tee that ecotourism projects are effectively given access to tourism markets and ensurethat they work within the strategic objectives of public policy programmes, they shouldcollaborate with private sector enterprises (e.g. for marketing support, capacity buildingand training) and appropriate public administrations or agencies. But care must be taken:in some cases, public!private partnerships seemed to artificially reinvent the wheel bycreating parallel governance infrastructures for parks or community councils. This is notonly barely effective in the long run, it also contradicts and undermines the principle ofdecentralised democracy with elected local instances.

Lesson 7: the need to make “heritage” relevant to tourists

The tourism policies of most countries of the SWIO emphasise the preservation and eco-nomic valorisation of natural and cultural heritages. However, in most cases, the ways inwhich heritage sites are presented prove rather “crude”. Endemic plants, staged for tou-rists in gardens or re-invented landscapes, were usually described by their scientificnames. Guides used hyperbole in an attempt to make objects more interesting (e.g. thelargest leaves, the oldest form, the smallest animal, the longest nose, etc.). Cultural siteswere often explained through archaeological interpretation and art-historic narratives.Sites of historic significance were frequently used to communicate themes of national orethnic grandeur and chauvinism. Most tourists are not botanists, nor are they art histori-ans, ornithologists or natural historians. Few are interested in listening to the self-aggrandising stories of ! from their perspective ! marginal nations. Most tourists go onholiday to have fun, to meet people, and to engage with and learn about things and stories


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that are exotic to them. For most, natural and cultural heritage interpretation based on aca-demic language, naturalistic knowledge or imagined superlatives is simply boring.

Many museums and interpretations sites around the world have adapted a style ofinterpretation that promotes spaces for multiple voices and ways of seeing (MacDonald,2012). They advocate a democratisation of natural and cultural experience through newforms of participation. In this context, local folklore and legends can become formidablemeans to bring heritage alive. Telling tourists stories about objects or places transformsthese into both a tangible and imaginary playground. It weaves tourists into the fabric ofthese local imaginaries. If there is a magic source with rejuvenating powers, then it maybe a good idea to engage tourists in this story, e.g. by letting them drink from the sourceor bathe in its waters. It is fun and fantasy to playfully bring them alive, and tourism is toa large extent about encouraging people to have fun.

At a different level, the development of stories and storied landscapes is a valuabletool to promote the inclusion of socially and geographically marginalised populations. Insome SWIO countries, fishers take tourists out to do traditional fishing, to hear storiesabout fishing, and to cook the fish together and eat it. In others, tourists engage in lan-guage and culture courses animated by village populations. Sometimes, tourists them-selves are offered to animate language courses in local schools. Heritage is about tangibleobjects, and also the way these are mediated in the contact between tourists and hosts. Iftourists, as part of their desired ecotourism experience, are prepared to spend money tolisten to local myths and stories, or even to volunteer their services, then there is a formi-dable livelihood opportunity.

Lesson 8: dealing with prostitution

One of the most challenging issues policy-makers face in their efforts to promote ecotourismis, perhaps, prostitution. In some countries, tourism-based prostitution is a thriving businesscentred on brothels and nightclubs. Most national tourism policies and action plans closetheir eyes to the issue. At the same time, prostitution is visible in all countries visited duringthis study, in particular in urban centres, harbour towns and tourism clusters. It involves bothgenders, and is practiced both by sex tourists (people purposefully travelling for the aim ofsexual encounters) and more opportunistic tourists. The sex workers interviewed here, bothmen and women, were mostly people with a short-term aspiration to earn money. Mostexplained that they could earn in a few hours the equivalent of the monthly wage of aqualified hotel worker. Some aimed to marry a foreigner, or to engage in an on-going, long-distance romantic relationship that would often last for years (cf. Simoni, 2014 for a recentreview of the topic). Some countries tolerate prostitution, others criminalise it.

Several national and international public health programmes run by NGOs and govern-ment agencies provide sex workers with information, encourage health protection measuresand support the creation of alternative livelihoods. UNICEF further points to the problemof child and youth prostitution, prominent in some of the SWIO countries, and workswith national governments and NGOs to effectively criminalise the practice (UNICEF,2009). Yet, in a context where the difference of revenues between international touristsand locals is dramatic, tourism-related prostitution is likely to further increase in the nearfuture.

Conclusions

The data I have drawn on in this article demonstrates that ecotourism, once it is clearlydefined, has a formidable potential to generate income and additional or alternative

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livelihoods in developing countries. Yet, it will only achieve this potential when meetingtwo major conditions: it needs to be economically viable at a micro-economic scale, andit needs to be integrated within a pertinent macro-economic and political scheme of tour-ism development and planning.

The different success stories and failures observed here indicate that the achievementof long-term micro-economic viability requires a simultaneous focus on the sustainablemanagement of upstream and downstream value chains and a sound economic manage-ment of tourism resources. Once suppliers deliver products or services that conform tosustainability criteria, especially environmental and social criteria, it is far easier for anenterprise (be it private, public or community-run) to manage risk and product quality,and deliver products that comply with environmental, social and economic viabilitystandards. Further down the value chain, the observations show the crucial importance ofintegrating a tourism enterprise’s products into the wider production and distribution sys-tems that exist in the tourism sector, nationally and internationally, hence adapting prod-ucts to consumer taste and effectively marketing these through relevant networks ofagents, such as travel and tour operators, hotels or souvenir shops. Moreover, and what-ever the type of enterprise, prime importance lies on the internal financial and economicproductivity of the specific tourism activity. As long as an enterprise does not generate anet income, it will fail in the long run and will not be sustainable. A central issue observedhere was the general lack of planning and project management skills at enterprise man-agement level, especially among smaller family and community-run ecotourism projects.

Similar types of observation also apply to the macro-economic viability of tourismplanning and development. As long as a local, regional or national tourism sector is notarticulated within the wider value chains of the national and international tourism indus-try, it has little chance to succeed. A key factor determining success or failure seems tolie in the sound planning (and planning capacity among senior government technicians)of threshold capacities, especially for transport and accommodation infrastructures, andalso in the training capacities for tourism and hospitality professionals. Nevertheless, in asituation of wider structural change and economic transition, as observed in all SWIOcountries, transiting from primary and secondary sectors towards tertiary sectors, includ-ing tourism, initially demands that public policy-makers actively support and subsidisethe private sector through the provision of wider transport infrastructure, professionaltraining facilities and marketing actions. Also, in terms of good governance, an importantlesson that comes out of this work is to implicate the entire population in the tourism sec-tor, especially where forms of national or ethnic identity and related heritages are mobi-lised as part of the tourist product. Here, social sustainability is facilitated through anactive and constructive engagement by public policy-makers with minority populations,and also with existing social marginalised phenomena such as prostitution.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

David Picard is a senior researcher at the Centre for Geographical Research at the University ofLisbon, Portugal. His work focuses on tourism and travel cultures, hospitality, winemaking andtourism destination development. He has a PhD in anthropology from the University of La R!eunion.He is the author of Tourism, Magic and Modernity, and co-editor of Festivals, Tourism and Social


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Change, The Framed World: Tourism, Tourists and Photography, Emotion in Motion: Tourism,Affect and Transformation, Couchsurfing Cosmopolitanisms, and Tourism and the Power ofOtherness.

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