Dolores Semeraro 0:00
Welcome to truth behind travel podcast. I'm your host, Dolores Semeraro former corporate PR girl and digital communication specialists, now hospitality speaker and trainer on a mission to help travel companies and tourism organizations to restore travel confidence. Through behind travel podcast is a weekly interview series in conversation with tourism industry leaders and travel professionals about what goes on in the industry today. How do we embark on the journey to travel recovery and restore confidence in travel?
Whether you are a hospitality professional or a passionate traveler looking for a podcast that gives you more than just one the last mile tourism industry guests from all around the world will walk you through the journey to travel recovery of their countries and share their priceless insights on the destinations they leave and working through behind travel brings you the key facts to help you travel once again, better, easier and smarter.
On today's episode, we are in Africa, where I have the honor to host the communication officer for Africa at the United Nations World Tourism Organization, Mr. Kojo Bentum Williams, during our chat, we discussed how African countries are reshaping their path to a next normal, and how communities and institutions are embracing technology to open their borders and welcome travelers once again. International tourist arrivals to Africa decreased by 35%, between January and April 2020, as a result of the pandemic.
And today, organizations like the UN WTO in Africa, are working behind the scenes to ensure that African countries are equipped and ready to restart the tourism and booster economies.
Kojo Bentum Williams, you're connected from your own base in Ghana, right after the first UNWTO mission to Africa since the start of the pandemic, you were accompanying the UN WTO Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili. How did it feel to actually get on a plane, get around, see people?
KBW 2:20
And the first thing that is very visible is when greeting, you're gonna shake hands and stuff like that. But yeah, I mean, as I said earlier, it wasn't easy in terms of building your psyche for it. But then once you start the trip, you have your hands sanitized, you go through all the processes and all of that you are keeping a bit of a physical distance. You're back to normal, of course, sometimes it's uncomfortable too, you know, breathe and all of that, but once you are used to it to a certain point.
It looks like it was normal. And that was a chill apart from the fact that you are taking that beverage. It was okay, so then it got to the ground. And then again, on the receiving side, you have your PCR, so exactly, they see the PCR or it's okay some countries like for example in Rwanda, you see your PCR and before you get it, you needed to go through that process and you needed to show that you are able to prove that you And then once you are there as well, you immediately you arrive, you're supposed to undergo a mandatory test.
Then because of how the system is done. So even before you arrive, you have to fill a form, you upload it, and then once you get there, you know at the airport, they look at your passport, you look at your name and it pops up. So you just want the hotels or you do a mandatory quarantine with the day. So we did that. And then in the test, you have a hotel. So you are moved from the airport to the hotel strip. And then once you check-in, your doctor will be in the room to take your test quickly. You get the result about 10 hours later. So it was cool.
It was okay we need to be able to understand that we cannot sustain this of lugging around and all of that. But again, unless you have a coordinated action from the government and from destinations, I've done over 15 tests COVID tests, within just two trips.
So it tells you that people, some people don't have the patience, the resources, etc to do that. So if we can put in a mechanism that we, we coordinate with our partners, I mean countries destinations, then it's quite easier for passengers and travelers to travel again,
Dolores Semeraro
Could you tell me a little bit about your background and the work that you do at the UN WTO
KBW
I am the communication specialist for Africa, what I do primarily, my job is to be able to enhance communication and be able to champion the project and agenda of the Secretary-General and the University in Africa. I do media coordination for our activities, essentially, my work is just putting out leading communication for the UN WTO on the continent, and vice versa.
So I'm on missions with the Secretary-General and part of my colleagues, and then we try as much as possible to explain until the African region know exactly what is happening in the number of projects at the University of the undertaking.
Dolores Semeraro
What were your main challenges over the last few months?
KBW
One of the areas is probably you want to call it that. The silver lining is like what we're doing here right now once was declared a pandemic and we're not able to travel like we would have wished we all resorted to using big data tools to be able to communicate effectively, we cannot replace one to one. And we have to admit, it is a process and a way to enhance the whole tourism ecosystem's experience in terms of communication. Now, we have a challenge in Africa, where connectivity is also a problem. So when you have those binary problems, and what it means is that it will become more difficult, but at least will not cut away from our members and from our people.
Yes, I must admit there was a challenge in terms of reaching out to all your constituency, but then we adapted to it. You were forced to be able to get ready for what is happening in terms of using emails using a platform like Zoom like WebEx And, you know, at the end of it, you are sacred, you know, live by geopolitical actually has been pushing that innovation was a core part for us to be able to make tourism even much more inclusive.
Dolores Semeraro
It's true that the latest events, of course, on a global scale, have completely forced everybody whether working in tourism or traveling within destinations, they had to face this incredible amount of technology while at every touchpoint of their travel journey, whether that was biometrics that a tracing contact tracing, contactless, station so there is this almost this forcing of technology over people if it's embraced in the right way, it comes to the benefit of of everybody, whether that is the local communities I believe, or the hotel operator, the industry operators as well as the travelers.
KBW
We just have to embrace it in a way I can tell you that many of us that were even savvy, were not comfortable, you know having to log on and videoconference etc. When we get to a point that the whole world was shut down. And you have no way you needed to communicate needed to work. And so that was a reason it pushed us to be able to go further to make that an integral part intrinsic part of us. And we did something at Rwanda, where we had a first hybrid major tourism event in Rwanda where we have people joining over 600 people and it will also in person, and that is a new layer that we are going through.
KBW 10:00
Fortunately for us to even enhance the whole tourism product, it was an opportunity for us to be able to look at the things that we could have done better. And we realize all spheres of our lives, not just in tourism. But you saw in the big businesses in the stock exchange, globally, everything came to a halt. I think that we have the biggest opportunity to be able to enhance our products to realize that it wasn't just a traditional market.
So what I've been to domestic tourism, regional tourism, how are we being flexible with our visa regimes, ie visa, all of that tells us that and even people are not traveling is the whole ecosystem. So that's what we need to ask ourselves, can we develop in domestic tourism that will be able to serve as a buffer? Or are we still continuing with our source market that now they are going through a second wave, and so our destinations are dying out, not everybody was ready to embrace technology to embrace these new protocols and to enable not just the population to work and live again in a next normal manner, but also to enable domestic travels domestic tourism, so it was a lot to ask.
Dolores Semeraro
let's talk about the member states for a moment when we look at the collaboration and the cooperation between African countries in the European Union, what are the priorities of the African countries, which are supposed to be ready to restart tourism and even without opening borders, at least within borders?
KBW
I think that first of all, we have to establish the points that tourism is a core part that make a very important part of the African economy. In as much as some of them are not putting the exact monies that we expected, the government to put in, the returns are there for us to see, we've seen that things have come to a halt because people are traveling.
Because initially when people are not traveling, people don't look at it from the point of view of tourism Now, the whole chain of air, travel ambition, everything has come to a halt, you under beat you with you know, in conjunction with CNN launch their travel tomorrow campaign. And that was to be able to help member states and the tourism community to say that, okay, we are not traveling because of the situation now. But again, once we are there, we use the opportunity to build capacity to be able to fix some of the things that we feel that we've not done, right, and then we can move on.
Most of these member states have really made a lot of progress. The lockdown again taught us that small and medium scale, enterprises in the tourism chain had a big problem. And I was happy to see some of these international partners and agencies through MasterCard through IFC, to try and support them. People have limited options if you don't restart, or reopen their economies. But we cannot continue doing the current thing because it's not sustainable. That if you put in quarantine measures, how are you able to get people to travel because it becomes more expensive, we need importantly for the government to understand that prison is that thing that keeps us going until you can imagine the damage that is done not just to have in the urban lives, but look at conservation, look at how we protect our Marines, all of that because we're not traveling. And it's because of activities of traveling at some point in time, that we get funds to support these in the protected marine ecosystem, etc.
So my point is that it is not sustainable for us to be where we act now locking down having draconian rules like this of quarantine, and all of that no one will travel to your country and quarantine you for, you know, five days to 14 days, etc. I'm not saying that we shouldn't put in the measures, but I think they are also smoke and mirrors that allow for people to be able to test the whole stuff before you travel. But for you to be able to travel to have 10 days minimum for parenting, I think that he is going to kill the sector and countries that depend solely on tourism. We've seen the problem. We saw tourism, a lot of strain in Africa from an inbound point of view. Now we have to see that the worst-case scenario is that international tourism will take longer to recover. So we need to develop a robust domestic and regional tourism, you know, offerings that would allow it because it's going to be short hauls before long hauls
Dolores Semeraro 15:01
Absolutely. And when you look at the preparation of each African countries, you know, along the line, and how are they investing in making sure that all the health and safety protocols are in place, and they are ready to welcome whether it's domestic tourism or international tourism, they are ready, and they can safely green restart the tourism within their borders. You've seen many of them getting ready, you've seen many of them using the opposite this time that we just had, and we are still having to do to improve and to it to work on their systems and protocols internally.
Which African country do you think at this stage is leading by example? And what can we learn from it?
KBW 15:49
Generally, you've seen that Africa has really managed this pandemic, well, we are having this work and be able to adapt and realize that just putting in strict measures in itself, without about other side of it doesn't work. So we've seen like, where I traveled to Rwanda, Ethiopia to Namibia, you've seen that it was so possible that every ration I went, you know, they had a hand sanitizing machine, washing hands Beijing's, and then importantly, be taking numbers, contact, because then he ate in the details also have an application that you can use, that for tourism establishment to open, remember that the risks that tourism, if the establishment does not practice something that brings confidence that governments are going to close them down, we've seen most of them putting this mechanism and some of them are beginning to take off some of the quarantine measures, which is good because we saw the response. So if you put in that mechanism, again, this is a free situation, there is no playbook. So we are able to adapt, you know, to what is happening. 1000s of millions of people globally have lost their jobs. And as we speak, now, some jobs won't come back again. So if we begin to restart tourism, and people responsible for that in different hotels, at all creations, everything, we don't do the things that bring confidence and gives a bit of hope, to the government to say that people are responsible, then we are chipping away everything that we are going back, we take one step forward, and then we take 20 steps backward. So I think that some are doing better, or this I think is taking time to catch up.
Dolores Semeraro 17:39
I see absolutely your point in, you know, highlighting that the job loss in the tourism industry has been monumental. And so much so that a lot of communities, especially within the African countries that are most affected by the decline of tourism numbers, are losing jobs every day. But even in those communities, as you rightly mentioned, that operate, live and breathe within the conservation of the wildlife. So these communities are have been heavily affected when I look at countries, for example, South Africa, Egypt, Kenya, Botswana, to name a few these are countries where the local communities played a vital role in preserving the wildlife and in the protection of the wildlife itself. Because that is in fact their unique selling point. It's what the tourists want to embrace and experience when they come to the countries as a traveler. But these jobs are being lost as we speak. And as you, as you rightly said, We need coordination to preserve this job. What do you think is the best way to support this business so that we make sure these little businesses these small and medium enterprises supporting the tourism industry don't disappear?
KBW 18:53
We need to be able to bring them to the table to understand your needs well so that we don't just become on the periphery part of the whole system. There has to be an integral part of how we change and how we reset. What I think is good for us to do right now is to be able to reset ourselves for a new project that tourism isn't over, it won't be the same. It goes back to again how we look at our source markets, whether tourism, we've democratized tourism to the point that domestic and local people are welcome. People became part of it. Because remember that some designation letters and look as if it's just for inbound or international that people don't know their own country. And once you travel with your own country, you stimulate that interest, you will become happy people have not been to a certain part of the island, in Mauritius, in my country, in different parts of the world. So how do we change the offering? We cannot afford to go the same way that we did. Instead, we need to bring people together, we've identified a problem and set a new path. Now the new path should incorporate things that will make them sustainable. Give them some, some, some buffer, you know, in the future. And you can imagine over 1.1 billion population or less than a million probably population, with a child within the continent, you can expect what can happen to our economy, we cannot all have a flat carrier in terms of airlines.
Dolores Semeraro 20:40
When you look at, for example, at the way, the small and medium enterprises operating in the tourism industry. They are not just they're just simply not equipped in terms of technology, in terms of tools for them to overcome these challenging times. And many of them actually operating in a very manual, manual way. If anything, what are the policies in place to make sure that they are enabled and well equipped, you know, to overcome these challenging times, run sessions with member states with our partners also, and then help them, people, to understand technology?
KBW
In fact, we did, we did about three challenges, one challenge we did the individual challenge during the, you know, the pandemic, and then it came out that people began, we're looking for disruptive tools, or mechanisms that we can be able to make tourism better, especially in these times, running sessions for this small and medium scale, because they need to be able to have the capacity, but over and above that user realize that we need some of the data companies to be able to equip them or help them because data is expensive in Africa.
So even in terms of we are having this conversation, people are having to because people are booked now, no income coming in, how do they, you know, afford with data. So what we have to do is to be able to also push to engage the telcos to see how medium-scale people can be able to support. And then once you've done that, then it gives them the confidence and the opportunity to explore and even grow them into their business, because some of them and not just a small and medium or even traditional businesses, we're just looking to just what I've been doing. And have you seen people being genuinely keen to adapt, I've seen that. And personally, I've received that we writing and doing a lot of things in tourism, we interact a lot with a, an auditorium supporters, and people who are like I said before, wouldn't even bother sending an email or something, all of a sudden, they're able to ping you to say this, what you're doing. Imagine it was one month, two months, three months, six, seven months. Man, you cannot survive if you don't adapt. So people have adapted? Well, that is the truth. People are keen to adapt.
Dolores Semeraro
But my question to you is, are the institutions keen to adapt as well?
KBW 23:15
Look, by fair, how many Am I going to get ministers of the state connecting with you sitting down with you on zoom, or whatever. Now regularly, they are setting the assistant in the office, which is part of their hybrid solutions to be able connect, I've seen that institutions that were very bureaucratic and very food and, you know, conservatives are moving out of what they used to do. It must be quite a moment in time, I mean, for you for the organization to work in a collaborative manner with all the state members in such a critical time. And to see that, you know, based on your personal experience over the years, you've had the opportunity, to engage and work closely with different countries, different African countries. So you know them you know, how the institutions behind these countries are how the backbone of the countries are, they're all very different and very peculiar. The mindset and the cultural background of every single African country is a world of its own. I personally traveled to Africa quite a few times and got to meet a few people from not many countries. I was hoping to keep coming back, but this 2020 sort of put everybody's on standby. But I'm hoping to resume my African pilgrimage, so to speak, as soon as possible. And I've seen how people are so so different. How do you see them collaborating? How do you see them working together to overcome this challenging time with Use some of our policies and projects and initiatives, we benchmark with our own mistakes? But a good point of collaboration, when countries are not talking or they're not engaging, or they're not speaking together, they become very isolated. Now, we need to move further from justice, organizational collaboration, to give more meaning to it. In our framework of some of our meetings, we see that other countries share with their counterpart to see what they can do together, because is a global situation, also, were able to pick some of the things that are working in other destinations. And that's why that what I can say that Member States African tourism, people are beginning to engage.
Dolores Semeraro 25:49
Well, we have countries that are keener to adapt to improve to overcome these challenges. We have seen a lot of businesses in the tourism industry being resilient on, you know, the current times and obviously looking at approaching these challenges with creativity, as you said, and if the institutions and the government bodies of all the African countries unite, and collaboratively work together, to improve and you know, to sort of forge that way forward, it will be beneficial for, for everybody, for the travelers, for the businesses, for the authorities, for those operating, tourism, and travel businesses as well, there's a lot of work to do, and I'm sure you are busy in resuming missions within the scope of the UN WTO, you just came back from your most recent mission.
So the highlight of the trip was that our Secretary-General has led again, the union means, the EU and the EU has led the global private tourism committee that brought key global tourism plays together to be able to champion a common cause. And then, you know, help the world economy to open up and tourism. So he's been to all our blocks, is being too, Saudi Arabia is being to the Middle East has been to Europe, and Africa was his first visit since the pandemic, okay, to restart tourism, when we put all the things in place, it can happen, you know, he met with the president, you mentioned the visor, even the highest leadership of the country. And then we went to the attraction site, he saw that tourism plants have put things in place to restart tourism. So these are the things that, you know, he went to engage to, also to, to, I mean, it was a launchpad for Africa to say that, I mean, for the European perspective, tourism is ready for every step, but his key message was also coordination, and the fact that we should be able to connect to see that, yes, the current time is not necessary, you know, the measure, we cannot look down, but they are always smarter away, or we can get traveling again, we need to bring in innovation, new things, the youth to be able to understand that we are moving to a new face.
Dolores Semeraro
So what's next for you?
KBW 28:22
For me, I think that having the new normal is always getting a second already, probably should be back in very soon. I want to see events happening again, it can be hybrid in different numbers. And that is a way that we can travel, we can be able to open up our economies. And there is a reason that if we have coordination, we don't need too many tests to just visit one country. And that's why I'm looking forward to it. And I'm looking forward to a bit of an exciting recovery that is not going to be very easy.
Dolores Semeraro
Thank you very much for joining us today on the program. I believe we have shared a lot of insights into what is happening across the African countries, and how is everybody getting ready to restart tourism, not just by themselves, but supported by the authorities and institutions, and most importantly, fueled by people that are keen to restart. This is after all the people's industry.