AfriCam gains momentum

Johannesburg, 28 Oct 2002

SA`s revived wildlife site, AfriCam, is once again gathering momentum, with growing subscriber figures and a series of new projects in the pipeline.

The site has reintroduced a polar bear cam and established an additional revenue model.

The once hugely popular site was liquidated late last year and restarted by the original founders early this year. One of the founders, Graham Wallington, says AfriCam`s support base is back to about half of what it was at its peak, when it was registering about 38 million page impressions a month.

"We are now up to 150 000 active, registered users and around 400 000 unique users a month," says Wallington. "Our biggest limiting factor at the moment is that we`re only running a 2-meg pipe in San Francisco and another in Belgium, so we cannot cope with more traffic at the moment."

Wallington says a new revenue model is being introduced in which handpicked game lodges will pay monthly subscriptions to run wildlife cameras on their reserves. Three lodges have signed up for the service so far, and are expected to go live next month.

This is a win-win model for AfriCam and the lodges, says Wallington. AfriCam extends its coverage and income and the lodges gain international exposure.

AfriCam provides training on converting Internet inquiries to Internet bookings.

Wallington says this has worked very well for Djuma reserve, which was the first to be associated with AfriCam. "Djuma receives around 250 hard inquiries via the Internet every month. It has 100% occupancy at the moment and over half of these guests are directly attributable to the Internet and AfriCam."

AfriCam`s new polar bear cam is a project run in partnership with www.polarbearsalive.org and International Wildlife Adventures (www.wildlifeadventures.com), in which a tundra buggy equipped with an infrared camera and satellite tracks polar bears near Hudson Bay in Manitoba, northern Canada.

Wallington says the bears gather in the region at the end of summer to await the freezing of the bay, when they will head out onto the ice to hunt. "The bears can be seen for about six weeks in what is probably the biggest conglomeration of polar bears in the world. It is one of those unique events that lends itself to the Webcam."

About 300 paying subscribers have already signed up to witness the bears converging.