Here’s the latest SimienEcoTours news from Ethiopia

Sad news from Tigray

As you might have heard, Ethiopia recently was in the international headlines for the crisis in the country’s most northern region Tigray, a conflict which started at the beginning of November and unfortunately still isn’t over yet. We personally know a lot of Tigrayans and we’re very concerned for the local people, especially in the countryside. They were always very welcoming with us and our clients when we passed this region with our tours. Even if begin of last week the Ethiopian Government declared a cease-fire, it will take time until the humanitarian situation improves and even more time until Tigray can be visited for tourism. Unfortunately about this issue we’re not able to tell you better news than this.

Covid-19, the second-tier crisis

Concerning the more known and global health crisis, Covid-19, even if Africa has been hit less hard compared to other continents, of course the pandemic impacted the tourism sector like nothing else precedently. SimienEcoTours was no exception and our business abruptly went down to zero about 15 months ago. Thanks to our good previous season until then, we had enough resources to survive, although now we’re really looking forward to seeing some bookings and business hopefully coming in soon.

What did we do so far?

So, how did we spend the last 15 months? Let me mention a few positive things which happened in our company since the outbreak of the Covid-19:

We didn't discharge any of our employees so far, although we reduced by 20-30% the working time/salary of some of the staff.
We did numerous training sessions for our staff, internally and with external advisers on topics like: Covid-19 safe travel protocols, sustainability, digital marketing, accounting and finance, and many more...
We're more than ever committed to sustainability and started the process of getting CSR certified with Travelife. We’re about to reach partner level in 1-2 weeks and hope to get certified in a few months.
We underwent a complete new branding with new logo, slogan and other colourful design elements.

We launched a brand new website, increased our presence on social media and have new digital marketing campaigns ready to be started.
We participated in campaigns solving some environmental problems such as cleaning up parts of the Danakil in the Afar region (done together with some other Ethiopian tour operators).
We developed our own Covid-19 Safe Travel Guidelines which you find on our website.
We developed new products/tours that (temporarily) exclude Tigray Region, fit better to travelling more sustainably and take into account the Covid-19 protocols like avoiding tourist hot spots and big groups of travellers.
We entered new partnerships with foreign and local tour operators.
We partnered up with 3 other Ethiopian tour operators and developed a completely new brand for mountain biking and other active tours and events in Ethiopia. Check out the new Ride the Rift website.

We organized charity events to support tourism professionals that have been hit harder than us, collecting totally more than half a million Birr or more than 13,000 USD. Details of this event in November 2020 (that we will repeat in November this year) can be found here.

With Ride the Rift and our own SimienEcoTours marketing we did some promotion to boost domestic tourism and are carrying out regularly tours (mainly) for people living in Ethiopia. International tourists remain a scarcity, but we hope that after the rainy season which has just begun more travellers will discover this beautiful country.