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By David Beirman
The Kenyan tourism industry has achieved a great deal in overcoming a range of severe marketing challenges during 2003.
In late May, 2003 I was in Kenya running a tourism recovery seminar as guest of the Kenyan Association of Tour Operators and the Serena Hotels. The seminar was attended by 70 leaders of Kenya's tourism industry and significantly a number of diplomats from the legations of Australia, Britain, France and the United Kingdom. This was important because as a result of this seminar we were able to establish what was required to alter the negative travel advisories which had crippled Kenyan tourism during the first half of 2003.
To the credit of Kenya's tourism industry, the government and the security services, security at Kenya's two main gateway airports of Nairobi and Mombasa was upgraded to the extent that the British rescinded their bans on commercial flights and relaxed their negative travel advisory by early July 2003. The German government also rescinded its advisory calling on the deferral of travel to Kenya by June 2003.
The US and Australian governments remained the only two governments of Kenya's major source markets still calling on its citizens to defer travel to Kenya based on the assessment of an "imminent terrorist attack". This alleged imminent attack has been imminent since March 2003 and has never materialized and hopefully will not. It calls into question the real motive for such advisories.
The Kenyan tourism industry has gone a long way not only in addressing security concerns for tourists but Kenya Airways' establishment of new services to Bangkok and Hong Kong (well covered in eTurbo News) have opened up Kenya to a new SE Asian and Eastern Asian market.
Alitalia has opened up direct routes from Italy to Kenya and Italians are now a significant sector of Kenya's inbound tourism market. There is great potential for growth in cruise tourism to Kenya in association with other East African ports such as Zanzibar.
One of Kenya's major challenges is to attract more upmarket tourism. The average per capita spend of tourists to Kenya in 2002 of just over US$300 is less than half that of 1994. The upmarket Safari tour market in Kenya has suffered a great deal from competition with South Africa and Botswana. Yet Kenya's ecotourism attractions and the tourist services associated with it are first class and price competitive with those of Southern Africa.
The Kenyan government needs to have an aggressive marketing presence in Europe, the USA and Eastern Asia to capitalize on available air routes. Over the past year too much of the marketing has been left in the hands of private enterprise bodies such as the Kenyan Tourism Federation, the hoteliers and the Kenyan Association of Tour Operators who have made great efforts to promote tourism to Kenya but experienced little more than lip service support from the government funded Kenyan Tourism Board. As tourism is Kenya's third largest source of foreign exchange revenue and has the potential to be its most lucrative industry, tourism marketing needs to be treated as a top priority government budget issue by the Kenyan government. Kenya's tourism Minister Raphael Tuju is an excellent speaker and communicator for his country's tourism industry but needs a budget allocation for his ministry to match his message.
There has been a lot of lip service for a more coordinated regional marketing between the East African destinations of Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania which would benefit all three countries and reduce marketing expenditures for all three in their common European, Asia and America source markets. Certainly a regional approach to marketing in Western and Asian countries would enable the benefits of tourism growth to be shared between these three complimentary destinations. Regrettably there has been little action to date. Just as the Wilderbeast migrate between Tanzania and Kenya there is no reason why tourists shouldn't cross borders just as easily. The
Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy" Groupe de communication Mulindwas "avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie" |
