I had the great fortune of touring two African countries that use wildlife tourism as one of their foremost forex earners.

I witnessed the 7Ps of Marketing in full motion at each of these destination and relevant touch points.

One such country was Rwanda, which markets its Gorillas as a premium brand, in sharp contrast to Uganda which promotes the Gorillas found on the other side of the same mountain in Uganda. Rwanda provides end to end customer services in order to make this premium-ness seen as a completely worthwhile cost from the eyes of the tourist. They leave no stone unturned to go that extra mile to ‘delight the customer’ as we marketers always strive to achieve!

The second experience was in Tanzania, where the founding father Julius Nyerere envisioned the future of his country to be dependent on wildlife tourism. He therefore declared 26% of its jungle mass as protected and conserved land for wildlife, with 16 parks currently in operation, bringing millions of dollars to the country coffers today. The park management, rules and regulations imposed to make sure the visitors get the maximum return on their investment is praiseworthy. The caliber of driver / guides who are mostly English speaking graduates, especially in Rwanda, make a world of a difference in taking this service to professional heights. They also act as passionate ambassadors to this process at every point. Cleanliness and hygienic conditions of the public toilets in each and every park stood out as a unique experience to me as a Sri Lankan, whose public toilet experience is much to be desired. Not a single piece of paper or plastic was seen in any park with thousands visiting them from all over the world.

These are all rules imposed and obeyed by one and all, while fined if these strict rules imposed were broken. The discipline of the Jeep drivers and guides is noteworthy too I write these thoughts in contrast to ours, which also has amazing potential but unfortunately not harnessed effectively due to lack of a long term sustainable vision and passion of the leaders, administrators and of course total lack of discipline of the local visitors to our parks. ‘Waiting for Godot’ with bated breath to see a change to this status quo someday …