Ecotourism in Madagascar - Responsible Tourism: Critical Issues for Conservation and Development - page 31

Development of the country's USPs and improvement
of marketing efforts
Madagascar has not been promoted aggressively enough by the National Tourism
Board (ONTM) in recent years due to financial and institutional constraints.
Efficient destination marketing and promotional activities including trade fairs,
tour operator familiarization, and press trips are necessary to increase the aware-
ness of potential tourists, tour operators and travel agents. Another problem is that
ONTM has had difficulty in finding an all-inclusive slogan for Madagascar.
There have been serious discussions about the branding and image of
Madagascar. Should there be a single focus on ecotourism or not? Should sun and
beach be offered with ecotourism? The country offers a wide variety of holidays
for tourists and it was thought that focusing only on ecotourism would not repre-
sent the uniqueness of Madagascar and its tourism potential.
In addition, it seemed to be a wise decision of the ONTM to wait to use
ecotourism for marketing purposes until it is properly implemented. Instead new
promotional material (brochures, a sales manual, website) was developed in line
with the presidential vision 'Madagascar - naturellement ', for activities focusing on
the environment. For a marketing campaign in France in 2006/2007 financed by
the donor community, the overall slogan, 'Madagascar - La vie en grand' was
chosen. Unfortunately this slogan is very much 'French' in the sense that it is diffi-
cult to translate its meaning into other languages.
The ONTM has also raised the 'vignette touristique', a tax to be paid by the
tourist and the financial base for the ONTM to finance its promotional activities.
This decision will hopefully result in increased promotional activities at the inter-
national and regional level in the future. Established as recently as 2005, its first
three years have seen some promising beginnings for the ONTM. This institution
now needs to focus on greater professionalism and higher quality efforts and less
of the internal conflicts that hinder it from doing its work properly.
Increasing the availability of education and training for
the local population
Training and education in ecotourism matters are unfortunately still nonexistent
at the time of writing, which is surprising for a country wanting to become a
leader in ecotourism. Sadly, not only for ecotourism but for tourism in general,
Madagascar lacks a proper system for education and training. As a result,
Madagascar has a large number of unqualified people working in the tourism
industry which is preventing it from reaching international standards and demon-
strating a more professional approach.
Some training courses do exist (e.g. the national hotel school INTH (Institut
National de Tourisme et d'Hôtellerie), the University of Antananarivo and a dual
training course from the Chamber of Commerce) but they lack professionalism
and international scope (Spenceley and Rozga, 2007). Qualified trainers lack
international experience, too, as well as specialization in ecotourism. The major