| We are delighted to announce that
Gamewatchers Safaris has been named as Africa’s Responsible Tourism Award WINNER
at the 26th annual World Travel Awards happening at the
Sugar Beach – A Sun Resort, Mauritius.
The World Travel Awards is globally recognized as the most prestigious honours programme in global travel and tourism and this victory is the ultimate industry accolade. Our win is indeed Kenya’s win!
World Travel Awards is voted for by travel and tourism professionals and consumers worldwide. It is an honour to be recognized for our commitment towards helping preserve Africa’s unique wildlife, landscapes and local communities.
Our Managing Director, Dr Mohanjeet Brar said, “Our focus as a company since our founder Jake Grieves-Cook started Gamewatchers 30-years ago, is to use small scale tourism as a way to protect habitat in partnership with the communities where we operate and who are part of our Gamewatchers/Porini family. I’m delighted that we’ve received this award as recognition for the efforts of our team. The challenge to protect habitat continues to grow with the ever growing population, a growing economy providing alternate land use options, infrastructure projects, human wildlife conflict etc…however with such loyal and passionate guests who continue to come on holiday and recommend our safaris to their friends and family it continues to provide the revenues needed for our conservation tourism model. It’s equally great to see the conservancy model in Kenya being replicated and having achieved such massive scale over the last 10 years.”
Gamewatchers Safaris/Porini Camps as one of the pioneers of the community conservancy concept is proud to share this reward with our thousands of community partners in Selenkay Conservancy, Ol Kinyei Conservancy, Naboisho Conservancy and Olare Motorogi Conservancy where we are founding partners. Our conservation tourism model is providing employment for over 240 community members with many in management positions, generating directly over US$1.3 million (Kshs 130 million) to the communities annually, and increasing every year, and all this without donor funding and as a result of guests staying in our Porini Camps.Other benefits such as bursary education payments to Ol Kinyei landowners this month (June) of over US$13,000 (Kshs 1.3 million) and commitment to Selenkay Conservancy landowners of over US$10,000 (Kshs 1 million) are in excess of the direct monthly payments.
In addition there has been significant improvement to the vegetation, grasslands and wildlife and the conservancies we’re involved in now have some of the highest densities of free roaming lions in Africa. As well as healthy populations of numerous other mammals such as giraffe’s which are unfortunately in serious decline in other parts of Africa.
Our Ol Kinyei Conservancy was also recognized by IUCN last year making it to one of only 46 areas in the world on the Global Green List of Protected and Conserved Areas and they say, “Sites on the IUCN Green List are certified as being effectively managed and fairly governed, with long-term positive impact on people and nature. Every five years, they are evaluated against a set of demanding criteria defined by the IUCN Green List Standard. These criteria include the quality of protection of natural values and the effectiveness of actions against threats.”
More Info about us and our approach from the links below
https://www.porini.com/about-us/responsible-tourism/
https://www.porini.com/about-us/
We thank our trade partners, travel and tourism professionals and loyal guests who are so supportive of our conservation tourism model and everyone that voted for us worldwide and look forward to celebrating this achievement with even more impetus in our ethos so as to help ensure sustainability and longevity of wildlife tourism in the areas we are operate in partnership with the communities. |
