For all of you that are safari guides and professional hunters, do you market to Spanish speaking countries? And if so, how do you do it? I am working on a research project for my International Marketing class here at Montana State University, and have chosen the topic of marketing Safaris to Spanish speaking countries-Argentina, Mexico, and Spain in particular. I have found limited information as far as trade shows, and I know that most of you, if not all, have websites that people can click on to find information about your safaris, but how do you generate the buzz to get people to surf for your website? What means do you use to promote your safaris internationally? This project is the majority of my grade for my last semester here at MSU, and it is proving to be very difficult for me to do a good job. If you have any advice, or information that you would be willing to give, it would be appreciated more than you know. If you want, you can PM me, and if you wish to correspond via email, PM me and I will give you my email address. Once again, ANY help will be greatly appreciated.

My PH for buffalo/leopard was Ivan Carter. He learned Castilian Spanish so that he could communicate effectively with his many Spanish speaking clients. I know that he has a marketing effort in Spanish but I do not know the details.

You can email him at ivan@ivancarter.com

He might be able to help you.

Ron L

Ron,
Thank you for your reply, I will try to contact him.

et al, please, if you have ANY information that you think could be even remotely helpful for me, please share it!

Thanks again, Ron!

I have taken and sent several Spanish speakers from several countries (including the Republic of Miami). I don't have a Spanish website, but I generally do a show or two in Spain each year, or our agent there does them alone. Living in South Florida, I have had ample opportunity to learn Spanish (now I just need to unlearn all of the bad vernacular from 20 years of speaking Cuban and Mexican slang).

Arrgentina is another place we considered marketing. I traded a hunt to an outfitter there who bought some dogs from me (Plott Hounds-he wanted them for hunting Jaguar). He says I could do well there. I am just going to let him run with it for me and see what happens.

I get emails in Spanish all the time from my website, so I'm guessing many of them are referred to me word of mouth by former clients (I generally host between 7 and 10 Spanish guys a year, some repeats, some new).

An outfitter need not speak a word of spanish to market in Spain, though. All you need is a picture of a warthog and bushpig, a pricelist in Euros, and a sign-up sheet. If you have pigs, they will flock to you!

THIS IS WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!!! Now I'm getting somewhere! Gentlemen, thank you so much for the information that I have been receiving-it is very helpful!

hhmag,
How does one go about finding booking agents for Spain? And thanks for the insight on the pig pics!

I have limited my country research to Spain, as this project is supposed to narrow my scope of coverage, and am trying to find the promotional vehicles, types of middlemen, distribution etc. that are commonly used in Spain. Any information regarding these will also be very useful to me.

I doubt this will help you much but FWIW:-

We get a very large percentage of our business from repeat bookings and recommendations and the rest comes from our website which is hosted by a company in the USA......this hosting is expensive but certainly pays for itself.

We don't do any shows or conventions any more - although I wouldn't rule them out for the future if we felt the need to go - but at the moment we don't.......and the last time we ran an advert in a magazine was about 2 or 3 years ago.

Nor do we use agents much anymore as it's expensive and so many of them don't know what they're doing and consequently just make life more difficult. That's not a criticism of all agents....indeed there are some on the forums who are very knowledgeable and good at what they do......but there are also plenty that don't fit into that catagory!

I think one of our advantages is that we offer a wider range of African hunting than most companies and we also offer a far higher degree of customer service than most of our competition......We only use the very best core product available. That means best areas, best hunting and best PHs. None of it comes cheap but fortunately there's a lot of hunters out there that appreciate that fact.

We have a very diverse client base which ranges between ordinary working people with ordinary jobs through the very affluent and a few titled people....... They all get the same high level of service.

As for our agent in Spain, it is a Taxidermist who has hunted with us previously. We just have a commission for day fee deal with him, as he likes to come every year. Good agents are hard to find, and I, like Steve, don't generally use them. I spend a bunch of time here in the states and a bunch in RSA, and I don't trust people to speak for me, generally. I have been severely burned by agents making promises I simply can't keep, like promising 60" Kudu or 80 lb. elephant. My agent in Spain has his own booth at 2 shows, and has his own mounts from our hunts there. When people are interested, he simply gives them a brochure I had printed in Spanish with the right photos based on what I have found a majority of my Spanish clients have previously hunted.

In Argentina, many guys are into wingshooting and fishing as well as cat hunting. I had one extra leopard permit this year and called my friend in Argentina to tell him about it. Within 10 minutes, it was sold on a 15 day hunt with rock pigeon shooting, black bass and trout fly fishing, and 7 plains game animals. Nice hunt for me as well as him.

The only real drawback to the Spanish guys is that they tend to be last minute decision makers. I had a guy call me last year not to book a hunt, but to tell me he would be landing in 10 days with three of his friends for a ten day hunt. They did not even have a clue as to what they wanted to hunt (other than pigs). I had clients in camp at the time, but among the 3 ph's in the outfit, we worked it out.

Be prepared to take the client's gun out of his hands to stop him from shooting all of the pigs on your concession when hunting with Spaniards Kidding, I do like hunting with them though, and the Euro is very nice right now!