Promoting Conservation Tourism: The Case of the African Wildlife Foundation's Tourism Conservation Enterprises in Kenya

This chapter examines the organizational form of tourism conservation enterprises, which has been developed and promoted by the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) since the late 1990s. By deploying commercial tourism as a mechanism to attain conservation and livelihood goals, tourism conservation enterprises are interesting cases to illuminate the market-based approach to conservation. This chapter describes the development of this organizational form, its main features and the main challenges in implementing and managing these ventures. The chapter concludes with an outlook on this market-based approach to conservation. It suggests that tourism conservation enterprises need to be marketed as being distinct from mainstream safari lodges, if they are to become a separate market category in the wildlife tourism industry. Only when tourists and their service providers, such as tour operators and tourist boards, understand the added value of these conservation ventures, sufficient benefits can be generated to achieve the ventures’ social mission.