Tourism Falls for Smiling Coast’s Broadened Smile

Mr & Mrs Gridley having a tropical tan beside

a swimming pool at their regular, Kairaba Beach Hotel.

“We were going somewhere warm,” Mrs Gridley, a tourist, told me. “When we got here, we realised that here’s got everything we wanted for a good holiday.”

Mrs Gridley and her husband, Mr Gridley, were among a sea of tourists having a tropical tan beside a swimming pool at their regular, Kairaba Beach Hotel.

The British couple first visited Gambia 30 years ago. Before, they’d holidayed in the Caribbean, India and Thailand.

Why has holidaying in Gambia since become an annual affair for this extensively-travelled couple?

“There is no point flying nine hours away to get what we can get here in a six-hour flight. So we keep coming every year,” says Mrs Gridley, wearing her quintessential British accent.

 

Harding finds glitters in a bush

 

The story of the start of formal tourism in Gambia reads like a fairy tale. A Swedish entrepreneur took Swedish tourists to Las Palmas in the U.S for tropical sun, but he was disappointed. Barthin Harding then flew to Senegal, but Gambia’s neighbour was not a great improvement on Las Palmas.

Despite advice that the country was undeveloped, bushy, the Swede motored his way into Gambia, arriving at night. Harding was ‘surprised’ when he woke up and saw the sun shining through the window, and, on the river bank, he saw a virtually unspoiled beach.

In his own account of the adventure, as published in a 1969 publication of The Nation, Harding explains: “I rushed down the steps in excitement to run to the beach where I took a dip in the warm water and ran all over the place. I knew right away that I had found the place I was looking for.”

Harding left the country for Senegal where he took a flight back to Sweden to bring into the country the first batch of Swedish tourists.

This was in 1965, the year Gambia attained independence. Tourism would soon find its place in the socio-economic life of the struggling West African country.

The industry’s GDP contribution of 14 percent remains the largest after agriculture, and creates jobs for more than 100, 000 Gambians.

At the time of Harding’s adventure, Gambia has only one hotel, Atlantic, in Banjul, where he spent the night. The country today has many tourist attractions. From miles and miles of tranquil and beautiful beaches, awesome resorts on the idyllic coast of slow meandering river Gambia, and historic sites - stone circles, sacred crocodile pools - to fabulous eco-tourism sites.

The relative political stability, guaranteed sunny weather, and relative short flight away from most European countries, are the country’s selling propositions.

Mrs Abby Sarr, director of public relations at Kairaba Beach Hotel believes that the best resource the country has to attract tourist is her people.

“We have friendly people who are always ready to go to the extra mile to satisfy the visitor. This is a traditional ‘Teranga’ (hospitality) which has been prevalent in Gambian system for a long time,” she told me.

Mrs Sarr’s assessment can be confirmed by a 2006 survey, in which tourists give more favourable grading to Gambians’ hospitality than the food and accommodation.

 

Picking up the pieces

Gambia had been registering a phenomenal increase, both in tourist arrivals and benefits accrued from the business of tourism.

The gains, however, took a nosedive in 1994, resulting in more than a decade of diminishing returns.

“Just after the coup,” Mr Adama Bah, a seasoned tourism expert remembers, “we had a travel advice from the British Foreign Office advising British nationals not to travel to Gambia.
“Not long after that, we had the Scandinavian travel advice, advising Scandinavians not to travel to Gambia. And during that time, those were our biggest market. So the impact was huge.”

19 years on, has the industry recovered from the shock that sent 65 percent of its workers out of job?    

“So far so good,” Mr Benjamin Roberts, speaking ahead of the April-2013 official closing of this year’s tourist season, tells me.

The executive director of Gambia Tourism Board explains: “All indications are that this season is better than last season.”

“In terms of occupancy rate in hotels we have as high as ninety five percent, occasionally up to 100 percent. Last year, we registered about 165, 000 tourists. This year, we could hit 180, 000 to 190, 000 mark.”

 A pipedream vision?

Buoyed by the few successive years of increasing returns, Gambia’s tourism stakeholders now have big dreams.

The national development blueprint, Vision 2020, targets to achieving 500, 000 annual tourist arrivals by the year 2020.
In the short term, the tourist season which lasts for six months, from November to April, is set for expansion, as part of plans to introducing an year-round tourist season.
“For the first time in our history, the 2013/2014 season will start in October, instead of November,” Mr Roberts unveils.
However, with a few years to the 2020 deadline, is the country in the position, in terms of infrastructure, products and services, to handle the targeted huge haul of tourists?
“My answer realistically, is, NO,” tourism boss Mr Roberts acknowledges. “We are not ready for all-year tourist season. Nine months, ten months, I will be able to live with that.”

When I asked Mr Adama Bah whether the Vision 2020 goal of 500, 000 annual tourist arrivals is, in fact, achievable, his response implied that my question was rather out of place.

 “It’s not a question of whether or not it’s achievable,” he says, calmly, before sipping from the cup of tea sitting in front of him at the Asset Bantaba restaurant.  

 “It’s a question of what are we doing as a destination to achieve that goal. If you’re targeting 500, 000 tourists, what is the plan to build the number of bed capacity to accommodate them?

 “What is the plan to expand the airport because if we have 500, 000 tourists arriving, the facilities at airport are inadequate? If we have more airplanes coming, do we have the necessary infrastructure to take care of that?

 “So, it’s nice to dream, but one needs to be realistic in terms of, also, having a strategy. The infrastructure, the services and personnel resource we have – all these need to be put into consideration.”

 

 Profit but not for Gambians

A buzzword in the business of tourism across the world nowadays is sustainable/responsible tourism. Which ensures that indigenous communities suffer minimum exploitation while deriving maximum benefits from tourism.

 Does the flood of tourists into the country, therefore, fundamentally translate into significant enhancement of the wellbeing of Gambian communities?

 Well, accounts of several tourism stakeholders suggest that tourists’ out-of-pocket spending has over the years reduced. This is largely because majority of tourists settle for a packaged holiday, meaning their accommodation, food and internal transports are prepaid.

 After all, the sector’s contribution to the country’s GDP, itself, has been yo-yoing between 12 and 16 percent.

 “Whether it’s the recession in Europe or whatever, tourists are not spending like they do before,” says Mr Ousman Sarr, a craft market vendor.

 The problem is apparently compounded by insufficient amount of value creation of tourism products. Value is therefore, neither retained with bulk of what tourists consume being imported.

“Tourism is not just about the numbers; it is about the amount of money the tourists spend in the country,” says Mr Bah.

He explains: “If tourists are coming and staying only in the hotels, we are not maximising on the benefits of tourism.

 “The only way we can maximize on tourism is when tourists get out of their hotels and come and spend with the local people outside, like the craft market, the food vendors, and taxi drivers, tour guides, small bars because that’s where the local economy is.

 “Whatever we do, let us make sure the foreign exchange that comes in is retained within the country. There is no point us receiving dollars and then import all the food, the drink and all the things the tourist need. Then, that money is going out too.” 

 

Beyond triple S is River Gambia

 In an era when countries world over are in competition to attract tourism in order to scare away the stubborn economic recession, what could be the prospects of countries like Gambia when compared to, say, Spain, which has the triple S – the sun, sand and sea?

“What you need as a destination is to look at your unique selling proposition,” says Mr Bah.

“The openness of the people, religious harmony, that’s one strength. Second biggest strength is the river we have. We have a river that is great; it’s navigable all the way to Basse, but it is underutilised.”

Here, Mr Roberts could not agree more with Mr Bah.

“The river is unexploited. The potential is there and we need to explore it. The tourists want this, they want to take a cruise across the river.
He adds: “I personally believe that the future of Gambian tourism is rural tourism. My focus is there, because we talk of the benefit of tourism trickling down, when that happens those operating in the hinterland will benefit.”

 And pimps and prostitutes arrive

Tourism in Gambia, in spite of the positive contributions, has its corresponding downside. One of such that remains a thorn in the flesh is the rise in sex tourism. Especially worrisome is child-sex tourism as reports show that the country is one of the new safe-havens for child sex tourists.

Complicating matters for the industry is “Bumpsterism”, a fluid but firmly-rooted informal sub-sector where mainly youth offer to tourists a myriad of services ranging from vending to pimping.  
The government had previously resorted to using force to rid the beaches off the ‘hassling’ but didn’t achieve much success.
According to Adama Bah, it would be difficult to curb such social vices in the face of poverty and youth unemployment.
This is how he puts it: “We all know even within the tourism Master Plan, it is well stated that using the military to deal with the issue is not going to solve the problems ultimately.

“If people are desperate, no amount of forceful means will stop them from not going out to find daily bread. Again, what I have been propagating is to link tourism to agriculture.

“If we develop agriculture and get more young people engaged, train them to be good farmers, provide market access, then we will minimize poverty and unemployment and eventually young people will learn to be entrepreneurial.”