By Kebba Ansu Manneh
A cross section of stakeholders in the tourism industry in The Gambia, including small-scale enterprises, have criticized the reintroduced “All-inclusive Tourism” package. The reintroduction of the package in the market, an overwhelming majority of them argued, has been harmful to their businesses and detrimental to the development of the tourism industry in the country. All-inclusive tourism is a niche product or all-in-one package in the global tourism market that offers tailor-made and comprehensive services to tourists. It includes provisions of lodging, three-square meals, beverages, gratuities, transportation, tour guides among other services for tourists while on travel in their favorite destinations.
The package is not completely new to the tourism sector in The Gambia. It was first introduced in the country in 1995-96 tourist season during the era of the military junta of Yahya Jammeh. The military government introduced the package in a desperate effort to revitalize from tatters the collapsed tourism industry that had suffered from the British travel advice to its citizens vacationing in The Gambia in response to the 1994 military coup d’état. The all-inclusive product was not well received facing opposition from small-scale operators who raised concerns on the threats it posed to their businesses. After few years in operations, the government argued that all-inclusive tourism product did not favor small-scale operators in the market because the package has no trickle-down effect which was harmful to the economy. The former government also concluded that all-inclusive package cuts off vendors and small businesses from benefiting in tourism trade. Thereafter, it banned the package and ordered Frost Touristik International (FTI), the company that was authorized to offer the product, to leave the country.
In a reversal of the decision of the previous government, the Minister of Tourism, Hamat Bah, travelled to Germany to hand delivered a license to FTI to resume operations in the country. Two decades after it ended its operations in The Gambia, in the 2016-17 tourist season, FTI resumed offering the all-inclusive product to tourists visiting the country for vacations.
Defending his decision for the reintroduction of the product in The Gambian market, Bah told members of the National Assembly that “62% of all bookings in world tourism are all-inclusive customers and it has become necessary that The Gambia’s tourism sector cannot go against the trend that exist in the world.” Small-scale operators in the tourism sector, he added, are not willing to adjust to the new trend. While The Gambia continues to be stagger at 150,000 tourist visits per year, he argued, Cape Verde is receiving over 800,000 tourist visits per annum. With the all-inclusive package, The Gambia with exotic beaches, rich cultures and scenic landmarks could attract at least half a million tourists per year, Bah said.
As all-inclusive tourism package provides efficiencies and advantages for certain players, but being a phenomenon of globalization, it also created winners and losers in The Gambian tourism market. Small-scale operators in the industry said the reintroduction of all-inclusive package into The Gambia’s tourism market is killing their small businesses because it deprived them of clients and customers they would have otherwise attracted in a lesser controlled market. Many of the stakeholders, The Gambia Times surveyed and interviewed, said that the biggest winners are the tour operating companies owned by foreign nationals, hoteliers and the ground tour handlers contracted by the foreign tour operators.
The Gambia now depends entirely on tour operators to fill up the tourism accommodations. The key players are Thomas Cook, TUI, and FTI. All these tour operators are owned by foreign groups which leads small businesses, vendors, taxi drivers, among many other retailers in the country to losing millions in leakages to foreign tour operators, and in discretionary spending.
The taxi drivers serving in the tourism industry, according to Ebrima Jaiteh, the Secretary General of Tourists Taxi-Drivers Association of The Gambia, were totally against the reintroduction of the all-inclusive package.
“This all-inclusive doesn’t help us (tourists-taxi drivers) at all because if you advertise The Gambia as a destination and in turn you book all their (the tourists’) rooms, food and transportation, then what do you expect ordinary Gambians to benefit from this package?” Jaiteh asked rhetorically. According to him, with the reintroduction of all-inclusive tourism, the industry is mortgaged to foreign tour operators at the detriment of the locals who make their living in the sector. It makes no sense, he concluded, if locals are not benefiting from the tourism business.
In responding to a statement by the Minister of Tourism that the all-inclusive package is here to stay in The Gambia, Jaiteh said “the minister should listen to stakeholders and scrap this all-inclusive deal as it only benefit tour operating companies at the detriment of Gambian operators.” He added that if tour operators are tasked with transporting tourists from the airport to the hotels and continue to provide transport services for them while staying in the country, then how would one expect tourist-taxi drivers who are paying taxes to the state to survive in the industry. After the introduction of the all-inclusive package, according to Jaiteh, most of their members have been queueing at garages with the empty vehicles during the day without making a trip. He said that the nature of the all-inclusive package for tourists is comprehensively tailored in such a way that the tourists, once in The Gambia, do not need the local vendors and taxi-drivers for any services. It is high time, he concluded, for the government to protect the interest of local operators against foreign interests.
Seedy Sanneh, the President of the Senegambia Craft Market Association, said craft market vendors are struggling under the new regime of the all-inclusive tourism system instituted by the government. Speaking to The Gambia Times, he said, “our opinions have never been sought as far as the reintroduction of the all-inclusive tourism is concerned. We have never been invited to any stakeholders’ meeting to discuss the issue even though we are also stakeholders.”
According to him, members of their association made a thorough evaluation of the impact of the all-inclusive tourism package on the craft market sub-sector. Sanneh described the 2017-18 tourist season was one of the worst seasons experienced by craft market vendors, adding that most of the tourists who visited the country never went out shopping at the craft markets. The tourists are cut off from the local markets as they stayed mostly in their hotel rooms after completing their escorts with the tour crews while in the country. As the craft market vendors have made the conclusion that the all-inclusive product doesn’t benefit their membership, they are calling on the tourism authorities to end the agreement it has reached with FTI.
“Even the government of Jammeh banned the package as it is meant to enrich foreign own companies and investors rather than small-scale operators of the tourism industry,” Sanneh said.
Industry experts also agreed that the all-inclusive package has adverse impact on small mom and pop stores in the tourism industry. They call on the tourism authorities to reconsider the all-inclusive tourism because most of the stakeholders are not happy with the package. Speaking to The Times, Seedy Lamin Bah, a tourism lecturer at the University of The Gambia, said “I want to appeal to the authorities to consider the views of the small-scale operators. They feel sidelined as far as the all-inclusive package is concerned, and I think it will be better for the authorities to listen to them.” Tourism, he added, is about local people benefitting from the tourists coming into the country, but where that is not the case, then it is better for the authorities to close the all-inclusive chapter which is the primary culprit of this deprivation.
A ground handling operator, who speaking to The Gambia Times on condition of anonymity, said most of the ground tour operators do not like the all-inclusive package. The fact that foreign tour operators are acting technically as ground tour operators, he added, is denying the locals of making any business in escorting tourists to attraction sites in the country. The dislocations of Gambian workers and small businesses in the tourism market, he said, should be the reason for the government to take a critically look at the impact of the all-inclusive package. As far as they (ground handlers) are concerned, he concluded, the government should look for opportunities for growth in other markets in the quest to filling empty beds in hotels rather than depending on the all-inclusive tourism as the magic wand to solving the problem.
Whereas globalization in search of cheap labor moves jobs from rich-Western to the poor-Southern countries, the creative destructive power of the all-inclusive package produces the opposite results for The Gambia. To many local entrepreneurs in country’s tourism industry, the all-inclusive package, paradoxically, excludes them from the gains of market efficiencies. As they’re now reeling under the pressures of globalization, the local stakeholders in the tourism sector of the country popularly known as “The Smiling Coast of Africa” are no longer smiling; but are, all too often, frowning.