Traveling the world isn’t particularly cheap, but we will talk about some of our personal expenses in another post. This is about what happens to money after you’ve spent it. We generally try to question any organisation that collects entrance fees for tourist attractions or national reserves about what actually happens to that money – especially in developing countries, where general price levels are exceptionally low and tourist fees exceptionally high.
Pricing policies
It’s a fair assumption that tourist magnets like Macchu Picchu (Peru), Angkor Wat (Cambodia) or the Masai Mara (Kenya) are money making machines. Entrance fees for these examples range from US$20 to US$80 for a day and compared with an average daily salary of around US$1 like in Cambodia, they are clearly overpriced compared to local standards. In some countries like India, Vietnam and most of Africa discriminatory pricing (meaning different prices for locals and foreigners) is the norm and that has it’s own issues. Only very few places give discounts for students or backpackers and prices are pushed up to the very limit that rich Americans are willing to pay for a ‚once in a lifetime experience‘, making many places unaffordable to travelers on a budget. But even we wouldn’t mind sometimes to pay higher fees, if only they went to a good cause instead of into the pockets of foreign (as in not local) businessmen, corrupt bureaucrats or arrogant politicians.
Distribution of entrance fees in Angkor, Kathmandu, Lalibela
Angkor Wat is a really good example for bad usage of entrance fees. A mere 10% of the fees (according to the Lonely Planet) is used for conservation of the archeological site, the hotel chain that operates the ticket sales collects 17% and all the rest goes to the central government in Phnom Penh – supporting a regime that is certainly not worth my money.
The permits for trekking in Nepal are another example for outrageous charges. Earlier this year Kathmandu introduced the so called TIMS (Trekker Information Management System), adding another US$20 to the US$22 for the national park permit. And in good Indian/British tradition it adds bureaucracy as well, having to fill more forms, deliver more passport photos, register at twice as many checkpoints during the hike etc – in short it is a sales argument for tour operators as they do all that for you. Best of all, that money funds the lobby organisation of the poor Nepali tour operators, which pushed for introducing the system and is even allowed to collect the fees.
Changing continents: The famous rock-hewn churches in Lalibela, Ethiopia – a two-day bus ride from the capital Addis – charge an outrageous 350 Birr (about US$20), the equivalent of a 10 day stay in a basic Ethiopian hotel. Despite our persistent questions, nobody there could or wanted to tell us anything about what happens to the money other than „it goes to the church“. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church isn’t famous for feeding the poor and the wages they pay to their basic employees in Lalibela – the only ones from the local community – keep them below the poverty line. We talked to a few of the staff there, whose stories are pretty desperate.
Usage of entrance fees in the Masai Mara
The Masai Mara National Park in Kenya (that we just visited with a great tour) is a special and really interesting case. One of the most famous National Parks in the world (with a useless website on Kenyan tourism info – the entrance fee quadrupled since they last updated it) is managed by the two local councils instead of the Kenyan Wildlife Services (KWS) that manages all other National Parks in the country. The park spreads across two constituencies and they have very different approaches of how to handle fees and their usage. The western third of the park lies in ‚Trans Mara County‘, who outsourced the park management to a non-profit called ‚The Mara Conservancy‘. They are one of the most transparent organisations in the way they collect fees, use some of them and redistribute the rest. Their website has the fee structure, pie charts about usage and up-to-date monthly reports online about conservation and research. Unfortunately it is the Narok County administration that is responsible for the more popular and bigger eastern part of the park and they do nothing of that – no serious website, no income reports and no budget transparency. If you have the choice, go to the Mara triangle (west of the Mara river) instead of the main (eastern) part of the Masai Mara.
However, after my written enquiry to the Narok County Council about where the money goes I got an informal, unnamed and unsigned email back. They claim that the revenue generated by entrance fees for the Masai Mara was about 1.3 billion KES (about US$15 mio) in 2010 and they use it to pay for bursaries, local roads and employ 1300 local people in their administration (as rangers, teachers, guards etc). Well at least some information.
Making an impact
Tourists that pay fees certainly have the right to ask where the money goes – and you should do so! You will not alway get a satisfying answer, but showing that you care can already make a small difference. The power to put pressure on authorities for more transparency relies mostly on denying to pay the fee, which might not be feasible if you came around the world to visit a certain place. But being conscious about where to direct the tourism bucks that you bring to a (developing) country and requesting authorities to be transparent about how they use it can help local communities much more than a sketchy aid programme. We have seen many cases where local communities don’t get a fair share of tourism income from their governments and pressure from tourists can enable improvements in the respective systems.
So we will keep making ticket office staff and their managers uncomfortable, and we hope so will you – because it does matter where the money goes.
