When tourists head to the Kruger National Park, they won’t necessarily come across the animals they hope to see. But the park’s ever-increasing popularity has led to almost guaranteed encounters with other people: there are lengthy queues at gates, heavy traffic on park roads, and chaos at wildlife sightings as drivers jostle for prime positions.
Congestion in the south of the park was so bad by 2018 that South African National Parks (SANParks), in its 10-year management plan, said it was a major threat to two strategic goals: creating diverse and unique visitor experiences, and stimulating tourism and economic development in the region.
Now, SANParks tourism research manager Liandi Slabbert and academic colleagues in Australia have come up with a nine-point plan to improve traffic management in a park that attracted nearly 1.9-million visitors between April 2018 and March 2019, 27% higher than five years earlier.
Some of their suggestions, such as a better online booking system and enforcement of traffic and visitor behaviour rules around wildlife sightings, have already been implemented, and SANParks says these are working well.
And congestion is not irking visitors as much as it used to, if Google My Business reviews are any guide. Apart from a remark that “the delay to get into the park is frustrating”, recent negative feedback relates mainly to road closures and the standard of accommodation in rest camps.
One of the reasons for reduced congestion could be linked to Covid: in its most recent annual report, SANParks said Kruger attracted just 1.32-million visitors in 2021/2022.
It was different in 2015, when a visitor complained about “absolute chaos at sightings, particularly lion and leopard”, and the researchers say in their paper — published last month in the journal Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa — that traffic management in the park was a “wicked problem”: complex, uncertain, open-ended and persistent.
Solving a ‘wicked problem’
Public organisations such as SANParks often don’t have the skills to tackle wicked problems, the paper says. That’s where the researchers stepped in with an approach that developed “negotiated stakeholder solutions” involving groups with skin in the game. These included independent self-drive visitors; visitors who stay overnight in one of the southern rest camps; open safari vehicle operators and guides; managers of large accommodation establishments bordering the park; Kruger managers; SANParks honorary rangers; members of taxi organisations who transport staff to and from their workplaces in the park; and other tour operators.
Focus groups identified the park’s nine main traffic problems and suggested 91 solutions. Then, in an online survey, the researchers asked 394 representatives of the key stakeholders to select the two problems that worried them most and to rate the proposed solutions.
The four most frequently selected problems and the top 22 solutions went into a second online questionnaire, where 390 participants ranked the 10 suggestions they saw as most important.
“Focus groups confirmed that the main places where congestion was perceived as a problem were at park entrance gates, wildlife sightings, picnic sites and rest camps,” say Slabbert and her co-authors, professors Roy Ballantyne and Jan Packer of the University of Queensland, and Joanne Sneddon of the University of Western Australia.
In addition, the study participants highlighted a lack of visitor education, speeding and poor driver behaviour — particularly at animal sightings. They also flagged the inefficient booking system, as well as the number of service, military and open safari vehicles on the park roads.
Suggested solutions flowing from these included improved booking and entry systems, and increased visitor education.
“Other solutions … were the need for more active and visible traffic control; enforcement of traffic violations; and traffic management solutions to address the use of open safari vehicles in the park. Solutions identified … included a reduction in vehicle numbers and separating open safari vehicles from self-drive visitors by opening new routes and entry lanes.”
A central theme in the discussions was that tourism authorities would need to “decouple the Kruger National Park brand from the ‘big five’ value proposition” if SANParks was to address traffic problems in the south of the park.
Congestion and visitor behaviour at wildlife sightings were two of the “big four” problems in the second questionnaire, and the paper says: “From discussion with open safari vehicle guides, it is clear that they feel obligated to meet first-time and international tourists’ expectations of seeing the ‘big five’ (lion, rhino, African buffalo, leopard and elephant), thus inadvertently creating a level of competitiveness that exacerbates ‘bad behaviour’ at sightings of these animals.
“Many self-drive visitors express dissatisfaction with the behaviour of some open safari vehicle drivers, such as moving their vehicles to best position themselves at wildlife sightings, blocking the view for others. Open safari vehicle drivers also notify each other of major sightings which then leads to speeding from one site to another.”
A central theme in the discussions was that tourism authorities would need to ‘decouple the Kruger National Park brand from the big five value proposition’ if SANParks was to address traffic problems
The top suggestions to address congestion and poor visitor behaviour involve enforcement and a complaints reporting system.
Gate congestion was the third “big four” problem, and there were strong calls for a new online booking system and different queues for self-drive day visitors, open safari vehicles and overnight visitors.
The consensus view identified speeding as the final problem, and enforcement — backed by fines — was the main theme running through the suggested solutions.
Slabbert says despite differences between and within groups of stakeholders, the process followed identified “the solutions requiring immediate attention and the actions that would be supported by the majority of respondents from all the stakeholder groups”.
Coping with congestion
The paper makes various recommendations to improve the situation. First is a more effective online booking system that collects all the information the park needs from visitors, enforces quotas, facilitates quick entry to the park, and provides visitor education about traffic restrictions and expected behaviour around wildlife sightings before any booking can occur.
That’s shown a measure of success, park spokesperson Isaac Phaahla tells the FM. “The online system is working,” he says. “We have not had any complaints and most day visitors utilise the facility. Quotas have proved to be effective in ensuring that public areas like picnic spots and ablution blocks do not become overcrowded.”
Second, the authors recommend that operators provide guided trips in open safari vehicles from the southern entry gates for day visitors who are unable to enter the park due to quotas.
This is being considered, says Phaahla, and consultations are under way. “It will offer business opportunities to emerging open safari vehicle operators,” he adds.
A further recommendation is the provision of dedicated day tour routes for private open safari vehicles by linking service and maintenance roads. It’s something that’s logistically not possible, says Phaahla, but he adds that all options are on the table.
The paper suggests that a depot system be set up outside the park gates for camp suppliers. That would allow supplies to be delivered to camps by park staff after the gates have closed. Phaahla, however, doesn’t consider this a particularly important concern. As he tells the FM, deliveries usually take place after the morning peak, “and do not interfere or cause any congestion”. In any event, the new system would raise costs, he says.
When it comes to enforcement of traffic management and visitor behaviour rules around wildlife sightings, he points to the fact that there is increased monitoring in place, and additional staff to enforce park rules.
Among the recommendations is that park staff model good behaviour on the roads by not speeding. Says Slabbert: “Visitors perceive that they are required to ‘do what officials say, rather than what officials do’.”
As it is, says Phaahla, “staff get disciplined if they transgress park rules and internal communications continually emphasise good and exemplary behaviour”.
Honorary rangers could also be trained to be visitor hosts at entry gates, the paper suggests — and they can be empowered to enforce traffic and visitor behaviour rules. But Phaahla seems ambivalent about the idea. “These are operational matters which require proper planning and execution and not reliance on honorary rangers, except during busy periods,” he says.
Problems could be mitigated, too, by providing visitors with educational materials about traffic rules and considerate behaviour around wildlife viewing sites — already in place, says Phaahla.
Finally, there’s the suggestion — already implemented — that the park provide “ongoing service quality training for traffic management and park gate staff”.
Broader application
The research technique used by Slabbert and her colleagues is by no means limited to the Kruger. Co-author Ballantyne, a South African, has previously applied it in a project at the Canterbury Cathedral world heritage site in the UK. And it “can be readily employed to address a range of perceived problems in other protected areas”.
It’s something that may become increasingly important as the turn towards nature-based tourism increases conflicts “between tourists’ desire for an enjoyable, up-close experience and the need to protect and maintain the natural resources that underpin the experience”, according to the paper.
But with the input of stakeholder groups, park rangers will be better equipped to understand the issues, “identify new and innovative visitor management strategies, and increase the likelihood of compliance with such strategies”, it adds.
“This outcome will enable managers to better balance their dual mandate of conserving biodiversity while also providing a high-quality visitor experience.”
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