Willingness-to-pay and the perfect safari:Valuation and cultural evaluation of safari package attributes in the Serengeti and Tanzanian Northern Circuit

•Model to analyze what attributes contribute to the price of tour packages•Five predictors including mode of transport and lodging type in best model•Tour operators charge 92% more per day in the Serengeti than other TANAPA parks.•Cultural tourism adds about $690 per individual to cost of tour package.

Governments and NGOs worldwide aim to develop models of tourism that realize the economic, environmental, and cultural ideals of ecotourism. This is true in the national parks of the Northern Safari Circuit of Tanzania, which attract hundreds of thousands of tourists annually. To better understand what tourists to Tanzania were willing to pay for various attributes of their tour package, we used a linear mixed effects model to analyze what attributes of 72 tour packages from 32 tour operators contributed to the price of tour packages. We found that the number of days spent on tour, the number of days spent in the Serengeti, the type of accommodation (basic camping versus lodges or luxury tents), the mode of transport into the park (flying versus driving), and the inclusion of cultural tourism helped predict the price of a tour package. Our findings suggest that tour operators charge 92% more for a day in the Serengeti than other Northern Circuit attractions, but we do not examine what happens to the additional rent generated by the Serengeti. Additionally, the utility of cultural tourism in attracting foreign tourists presents both tremendous opportunities and potential challenges to efforts to realize culturally sensitive ecotourism.