Niche tours offer a drawcard for visitors
companies in Kenya moved their operations to Ethiopia, according to the Kenya Flower Council.
“They are milking us. Most of the flower farms were in the negative in 2015,” said Jeff Kneppers, the Dutch owner of Maridadi Flowers. He’s been in Kenya for more than 20 years. “Other farmers are talking about relocating to Ethiopia.” He’s staying for now, preferring the country’s more favourable climate, better-skilled workers and private land ownership, which is barred in Ethiopia.
Kenya’s government was “not aware of bribery problems”, said Irungi Ndirangu, the director of crops at the country’s Agriculture Ministry. “We are always looking into taxes with the Treasury to make it easier for our farmers.“
The need for globally traded currency is the primary reason Ethiopia encourages horticulture investors with tax breaks and state bank loans. Regulations include depositing hard currency with Ethiopian banks, which the growers then convert into the local currency, the birr, within a month. Investment rules permit profit repatriation, though foreign-currency shortages make it difficult in practice.
That’s fine by Ammerlaan, who supports the government’s desire to make productive investments and move Ethiopia away from fragile subsistence agriculture.
“By bringing a lot of foreign currency, the country can better take care of food security,” he said. Despite his openness, Ammerlaan didn’t allow any of his 1 100 workers to be interviewed. The caution is due to a recent Dutch documentary alleging tax evasion and pollution at Ziway flower farms. Efforts to talk to workers outside the complex were blocked by a sec- urity guard in a bright pink football shirt, who then tailed a reporter on a motorbike into Ziway.
Sales pipeline
AQ provides long-term customers in the Netherlands with high-quality roses, which make up 80 percent of the 100 million stems grown annually at the farm. Ethiopian-grown flowers are making their way into the world’s largest flower auction, in Aalsmeer in the Netherlands. There, they compete with blossoms from 64 other countries on the auction floor at Royal FloraHolland, a co-operative that traded about 3.5 billion rose stems last year.
At the site, which covers an area equivalent to 182 soccer fields, workers standing on electric carts move trolleys with flowers around the warehouse. Alongside the auction floor, several dozen traders, many of them graying, middle-aged men, sit in an auditorium that seats 300 people, facing auction clocks on the wall. All wear headsets to communicate with the auctioneers seated opposite each other in the bottom corners on the bidding hall’s floor, and in other salesrooms.
“The past couple of years you can see supply from Ethiopia really taking off,” said Cees van Egmond, who started his company in 1972. It supplies “higher-segment” florists across the Netherlands, using four refrigerated trucks. The quality of Ethiopian roses had improved over the last two years as transportation times had been reduced, he said. Ethiopia still has progress to make when it comes to democracy and transparency. The country’s ruling coalition controls all federal and regional parliamentary seats and an authoritarian government led by Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn restricts the activities of the opposition, media and rights advocates. The government uses five-year economic plans to direct resources to strategic industries, while state-owned enterprises monopolise or dominate key areas such as financial services, telecoms, transport and energy.
And in flowers, Ethiopia has some way to go before it catches its southern neighbour: Production last year was about 50 000 tons a year, according to the Ethiopian Horticulture Producer Exporters Association. That compares with 122 800 tons in Kenya. – Bloomberg
TRADITIONAL tourism is an economic pillar in Cape Town, with millions of international, regional and domestic visitors enjoying the attractions and experiences the city has to offer. More than just Table Mountain and the beaches, though, the city has a vast array of niche tourism experiences that, of their own, generate billions to the local economy.
Niche tourism can be described as focused experiences and areas of interest that entice visitors, but it’s much more than that. Niche tourism experiences form the very backbone of tourism itself.
A shortened list of niche tourism categories includes: religious tourism, sports tourism, cultural tourism, party tourism, township tourism, medical tourism, culinary/wine tourism, wildlife, garden and shark tourism and science tourism.
All of these are well represented in Cape Town. It’s possible to experience many of these in one trip to the city.
Military history is relatively low-key, but next month sees the introduction of a new Military Heritage Route that will incorporate Simon’s Town’s SA Navy Museum, Chavonne’s Battery Museum and the Castle of the Cape of Good Hope.
In in 2009, wine tourism in South Africa contributed an estimated R4.3 billion to the economy, the Cape Town Cycle Tour contributed R450 million to the city in 2014 and the Cape Town International Jazz Festival brought in R700m in 2014.
Sabu Siyaka of Ubuntu Events and Tours is an example of an entrepreneur who has spotted a gap and filled it. He saw a need for international students to go on township tours, and set one up within his neighbourhood, Langa. His tour has brought in eight other local businesses as part of the experience. In a similar way, Siphiwe Ngwenya, of the Maboneng Township Arts Experience, takes visitors on a tour of artists’ homes in townships, allowing them a glimpse of the art in the place it was created. This is of benefit to the artists and peripheral businesses. Then there’s Rhonda’s Tours and Travel with Rene, which clearly show the prowess female entrepreneurs have in tourism.
Rhonda Savage-Julie, founder of Rhonda’s Tours, takes visitors on a Jazz Safari, where you can meet local musicians while enjoying Cape-flavoured music and food. Rene Moses, of Travel with Rene, specialises in wheelchair accessible experiences, allowing access to niche experiences such as shark-cage diving and paragliding.
Religious tourism simply ties together existing environments with a focus on a specific market, so, for example, halaal tourism provides a collection of visits to mosques, kramats, halaal restaurants and other places of significance to the Muslim visitor. A tour operator can put a collection of these on an itinerary and offer it to visitors from the Middle East, for example.
Cape Town Tourism has, for the past two years, adopted this approach to marketing the city’s experiences in low season. The Hello Weekend campaign provides suggested collections of experiences that appeal to disparate markets – so a party weekend could have beer and wine tastings, cruises and more, while an adventure weekend would be crammed with adrenalin-prompting experiences. These work best when not focusing on one specific business but rather work in partnership with a series of businesses that enhance each other. These partnerships create an opportunity for the visitor to have a seamless trip that showcases the best of the best, their experiences are positive, and generate fantastic word-of-mouth advertising, especially on social media.
Science tourism is especially interesting; the city has an extensive scientific heritage, with astronomy being a major focus, as well as archaeology and natural history. Academics and enthusiasts come to the Cape with the intention of exploring all of the offerings related to these.
Medical tourism is one that’s unusual; it refers to people who leave their own places of residence to access medical treatments or procedures, sometimes as the cost of these procedures is prohibitive at home or also because the waiting lists for those may be too long.
Tourism professionals can benefit from niche tourism by looking at those niches through the eyes of visitors – what interests them, what does the destination have on offer that would appeal to them and what could be tailored into a marketable business offering?
The possibilities are endless for enterprising individuals with a flair for creativity and reinvention.