TOURISM ANALYSIS

Revisiting Botswana’s High-value Low-volume tourism

Authors: Magole, Lefatshe I.; Magole, Lapologang

Source: Tourism Analysis, Volume 16, Number 2, 2011, pp. 203-210(8)
Publisher: Cognizant Communication Corporation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3727/108354211X13014081270486
Abstract

Botswana has adopted a High-value Low-volume tourism strategy in a bid to minimize

negative environmental impacts on pristine wildlife areas whilst maximizing socio-
economic benefits. This implies sustainable development/tourism. While conservation of
biological diversity appears to be on course, visitation and hence revenue has remained
stunted in most parks and reserves. Moreover, the High-value Low-volume tourism
strategy appears to have contributed towards enclave tourism, with a large foreign
ownership of Tour Operator companies and repatriation of profits from Botswana. This
compromises yet another principle of sustainability, social equity. It would appear that
the High-value Low-volume tourism strategy is anti sustainability and hence not suitable
for a developing country like Botswana with a large rural population which is still highly
dependent on natural resources. This paper utilizes secondary data to evaluate the
effectiveness of the high-value-low-volume strategy in achieving sustainable tourism
development in Botswana.

Key words: Tourism policy, High-value low-volume tourism strategy, Sustainable

tourism development, Protected area management, Enclave tourism, Environmental
Conservation.

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1.1 Introduction

Tourism became one of the most important economic, social, cultural, and political
phenomena of the twentieth century (Ceballos-Lascurain 1996). Governments,
particularly in developing countries encourage tourism investment because of the
assumption that it constitutes sustainable development in general and economic growth in
particular (Peace, 1989). However, sustainable tourism encompasses a set of principles,
business methods, policies and strategies that support it (Saayman & Saayman, 2006).
These are loosely based on the broad principle of sustainable development.

Sustainable development is defined by the three notions of economic, social and

environmental sustainability (Munasinghe and MacNeely, 1995). Environmental
sustainability is a process of maintaining or improving the life support system of the earth
(Holdren et al, 1998). Economic sustainability relates to maintaining economic growth
that is sustained perpetually. Social sustainability is more fluid, relating to intangible
aspects such equity, equality and uplift of the standard of living of ordinary citizens
(Mabogunje 1989).

Figure 1: Sustainable Development Triangle

Economic objectives
Growth and efficiency

Social objectives
Eradication of poverty and Ecological objectives
inequality
Environmental conservation

Sustainable development as a strategy of development requires that a society strive to

achieve these objectives simultaneously. The concept is based on the belief that
environmental conservation is important for economic growth, thus in destroying the
environment we destroy the basis for economic production and growth. Sustainability in
development also requires equitable distribution and access to wealth and the means of
accumulation (Stevens & Jansen 2002). It is here argued that inequity breeds poverty and
poverty can lead to desperate and unsustainable exploitation of natural resources.
Sustainable tourism development would hence have to adhere to these principles.

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Botswana is a good candidate for sustainable development and subsequently tourism. The
country is endowed with wildlife and vast areas of spectacular and un-spoilt scenery,
otherwise dubbed “Africa’s best kept secret”. Close to 100,000 km2 (17% of countries
land surface area) has been set aside as national parks and game reserves (see Figure 2).
The primary objective of setting up these areas was and still is to conserve biological
diversity (Eagles et al 2002), and the secondary objective is to realize socio-economic
benefits through tourism development. According to Fowkes (1985), tourism in
Botswana was in the mid 1980s bringing important foreign exchange to the country
comparable to textiles. This he argues is an indication that the tourism potential if
carefully planned and tapped would benefit Botswana indefinitely (Fowkes 1985). Indeed
the Botswana Tourism Master Plan (2000) identifies tourism as one of the economic
sectors with potential to contribute to the diversification of Botswana’s mining-
dominated economy. Through a combination of the Wildlife Conservation Policy of 1986
and the Tourism Policy of 1990, Botswana adopted a High-value Low-volume tourism
strategy which favours high paying international visitors.

1.2 Criticism of the High-value low-volume tourism strategy

Academics have since the 1980s criticized tourism policies that target rich international
tourists for achieving less than optimal for the host country (Britton, 1982; Brohman,
1996; Leach and Mearns 1996, Oppermann and Chon, 1997; Scheyvens, 2002, Mbaiwa
2002). Oppermann and Chon (1997) contend that tourism is an industry used by the
developed countries to perpetuate dependency of developing countries on them. They
argue that instead of reducing the socio-economic regional disparities in developing
countries, tourism reinforces them through its elite-controlled tourism development.
Echoing the same sentiment, Little (1991) and Magole & Magole 2005 argue that
Botswana’s tourism policy is contradictory as it assumes that impoverished rural
communities have the skills, experience and resources to cater for high end tourists.

Mbaiwa (2003) criticizes Botswana’s high value low volume strategy for systematically
excluding both budget tourists and citizens from tourist areas whilst making them
accessible to wealthy foreigners from developed countries. Mbaiwa (2003) goes further
and holds the tourism policy responsible for promoting enclave tourism in the Okavango
Delta, where tourists have minimal or no interaction with the local communities. In this
paper we argue that the strategy has hampered tourism development in protected areas
and disenfranchised the country from benefiting optimally from them and further that the
policy goes against the principles of sustainable development and hence sustainable
tourism, because while the environmental protection objective has been achieved to a
satisfactory level, opportunities for realizing socio-economic objectives are thwarted. As
implied above this anomaly has the potential of reversing the environmental
achievements. Saayman & Saayman (2006) argue that for developing countries, a holistic
(sustainable) approach to development is especially relevant, since the exploitation of the
resource solely for economic benefit can harm future earning potential of the area.

Both researchers and tourism practitioners agree that the best way of achieving
sustainable tourism development is by applying a balanced planning approach which

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among other principles of sustainability, incorporates public participation (Trousdale
2000, Government of Botswana 2004). However, balanced planning is rarely achieved
and the literature is replete with case studies chronicling failures in tourism development.
The fundamental reason for these failures is that key sectors still embrace a ‘messianic
faith’ in economic growth that supercedes the consideration of a participatory governance
structure, appropriate policy strategies, regulations, enforcement capabilities, technical
and managerial expertise and a political will required to pursue a balanced planning
approach (Trousdale 2000).

Figure 2: Map showing Parks, Reserves, and Wildlife Management Areas (WMA)
of Botswana

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2.1 Tourism policy and development in Botswana

Tourism development in Botswana is guided by the Tourism Policy of 1990. The main
objective of the policy is “to obtain from the tourism resources of the country, on a
sustainable basis, the greatest possible net social and economic benefits for Batswana”
(Government of Botswana, 1990:p14). The objective was further broken down into the
following objectives:

• To increase foreign exchange earnings and government revenues.

• To generate employment, mainly in rural areas.
• To raise incomes in rural areas in order to reduce urban drift.
• To promote rural development by stimulating the provision of services in remote
areas of the country.
• To improve the quality of life by providing educational and recreational
opportunities.
• To project a favourable national image to the outside world.

To achieve these objectives the policy recommends a marketing strategy that will ‘shift
the mix of tourists away from those who are casual campers towards those who occupy
permanent accommodation’ (Government of Botswana, 1990:p3). Practical measures
(Government of Botswana 2000) to implement the strategy included;

• Encouraging and supporting provision of luxurious lodges which cater for

wealthy visitors.
• Limiting the beds in lodges and camps to a maximum of 16 beds per lodge or
camp;
• Limiting access to parks and reserves to 4 x 4 vehicles only by not upgrading the
roads to and inside the parks and reserves for use by non 4 x 4 vehicles
• Encouraging use of aircrafts to remote camps by developing bush airstrips
• Limiting the number of camp sites inside parks and reserves areas to designated
areas only with prescribed capacity (Magole & Gojamang 2005).

2.2 Performance of the High-value Low-volume strategy in Botswana: Has

sustainable development/tourism been realized?

This strategy was premised on the assumption that high spending tourists would bring the
greatest economic and social benefits with low impact on the environment. However, as
scholars have predicted, the High-value Low-volume strategy has yielded results which
are far from the ideals set by the principles of sustainability as illustrated in Figure 1
above. While conservation of biological diversity appears to be on course (Cumming
2004), visitation and hence revenue has remained stunted in most parks and reserves,
(Figure 3) save for the northern parks of Chobe National Park and Moremi Game Reserve
(see Figure 2 for location).

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Figure 3 Total number of tourist visits to all national parks and game reserves in
Botswana (1984 – 2004).

180
No. of tourists ('000)

160

140

120

100

80

60

40

20

0
1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

Total Tourists 2 per. Mov. Avg. (Total Tourists)

Source: Magole & Gojamang 2005

Furthermore, even in these wildlife conservation areas where the strategy appears to have
had some success, tourist visitation has remained far below the set capacities, with
occupancy rates of below 20% (see Figure 4). Comparison with the Kruger National Park
in South Africa which has a more open system appear to show that better occupancy rates
can be achieved by allowing mixed income tourists.

Figure 4: Campsite Occupancy for Moremi, Chobe & Kruger parks in 2001

50% 46%
45%
40%
35%
30%
25%
20%
15% 12%
10% 7%
5%
0%
Moremi Chobe Kruger

Campsite occupancy

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Source: Magole & Gojamang 2005 and South African Tourist Board Annual Tourism
Statistics 2002

It would appear also that being selective with tourists has had the effect of keeping
revenues lower than they would otherwise be if more middle and low budget tourists
were permitted to visit. Again, the Kruger National Park which has a more open system
raises a higher per capita revenue than Botswana parks which operate under the High-
value Low-volume strategy (see Figure 5 below). Thus, despite her high profile tourists
Botswana is earning less per tourist than Kruger because of low numbers of tourist.

Figure 5: Per capita revenue generation for four parks in 2001

300

200

100

0
Per Capita Tourist revenue
generation
Kruger NP 300
Moremi GR 204
Chob e NP 93
Pans NP 139

It is inherent that the HvLv strategy never intended for citizens to become active
participants in tourism, both as tour operators and tourists as observed by Little (1991).
If anything, the HvLv strategy accelerated the monopoly of the tourism industry by
foreigners (Mbaiwa, 2003). High cost infrastructure is required to attract rich tourists.
Botswana’s tax payer has paid the high price through the provision of high capital
investment infrastructure which includes two international airports that are 300km apart
in northern Botswana, to cater for the many air charter companies with fleets of small
aircrafts for transportation of tourists. Private investment involves construction of multi-
million pula luxury camps and other related structures. These high initial capital
requirements have had the effect of eliminating the majority of Batswana, especially
members of local communities, from participating in or starting up tourism companies
(Mbaiwa, 2003). From a service delivery perspective, many Batswana were automatically
eliminated from the industry because catering for high end market requires experience
and a high level of sophistication to meet the stringent requirements of tourists who pay a
lot of money to visit. The tourism policy has also eliminated Batswana from
participating in the tourism industry as tourists, because though their park entry tariffs are
affordable for locals, the need for a 4x4 vehicle makes it impossible to visit the parks.

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3.1 Conclusion

A high value low volume policy has narrowed the development spectrum of tourism in
Botswana by making it exclusive and focusing it on one sector of the market in terms of
both the tour operator companies and tourist clients. By targeting the high end socio-
economic tourist clientele, the tourism policy selected a segment of the market that is not
loyal, is unpredictable, sophisticated and overly demanding. According to Prossor (1994),
these are elites (high socio-economic class) who are trend setters, they desire novelty,
uniqueness and exclusivity of experience and they are for ever seeking out fresh
destinations and moving on, potentially triggering the product cycle in all the destinations
they visit (Butler, 1980, 1997).

We observe also that by opting for the high value low value policy, the Government of
Botswana also abdicated its role as a rural and tourism development proponent and
facilitator. In other sectors of the economy, the government set up additional structures to
ordinary Government departments that allowed it to be hands on in the respective sectors
and influence their development for the public good. This is the case in for example the
Botswana Meat Commission in the Beef industry, the Botswana Power Corporation in
the energy sector, and the Botswana Telecommunications Corporation in the
communications sector. By not participating directly in the tourism industry, the
Government compromised one of the objectives of the tourism policy which was to
“generally promote rural development”. The absence of government in the industry has
also meant that this largely foreign owned and foreign driven sector has been left to
regulate itself. According to the Tourism Policy (1990) document, because they are for
the most part unregulated and unmonitored tourism companies often evade taxes and
other requirements.

It is argued here that an inclusive rather than exclusive tourism policy is appropriate for a
developing country like Botswana. By opting for such a policy, opportunities and
possibilities are opened up for all sectors of the economy including informal & formal
sectors, small, medium & large scale operations. Botswana has therefore over the past
twenty years missed out on the opportunity to develop a fully fledged tourism industry
which caters for different socio-economic classes. This has translated into failure to
achieve sustainable development and or sustainable tourism ideals. We conclude that it is
desirable if not urgent for Botswana to revise her tourism policy in order to align it with
all its objectives, especially the one on improvement of rural livelihoods.

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