Battered tourism now targets Asia

Although during the peak of the US$256 million (Sh20 billion)-plus tour industry in 1996 could have been unimaginable, reality has struck home with a deadly impact.

It is no longer safe to bank on the security-sensitive Westerners who are more and more viewed as cannon fodder for Middle Eastern terrorists. Kenya, by the dint of being the nerve center of regional communications, has found itself at the thick of all things evil.

Tour operators and the national tourist marketing body, Kenya Tourist Board [KTB], are taking deliberate measures in the direction of Asia. Tour operators from the region are getting enticed to make Kenya part of their itinerary. This has especially been boosted by introduction by national carrier, Kenya Airways, of flights to Bangkok and Hong Kong, both in the middle of the booming south east Asia region.

The linkage has further been bulwarked by introduction of flights to the Chinese city of Shanghai by Gulf carrier, Emirates. The airline that like Kenya Airways has perfect African route connections has three non-stop frequencies from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Middle East itself is an important source of Asian visitors to Kenya though most of them are business visitors as opposed to holidaymakers.

Official statistics demonstrate the growing importance of the Asian visitors. Although they are just a portion of the total 547,314 recognised as tourists by the board, at 52,661 they formed a significant and growing statistic. The figure represented 30 per cent growth over the previous year 40,508 according to the Central Bank of Kenya monthly Economic Review for March. In 2001, the Asian visitors were recorded at 37,859.

In contrast last year, visitors from the United States registered a 1.5 per cent decline as the government of the country continued rolling over its travel advisories on some 11 eastern Africa countries, Kenya included.

Visitors from the backbone UK, in the wake of copycat alerts recorded a more significant 6.9 per cent contraction. Britain, whose British Airline suffered heavily in regional air travel, later lifted its

alerts unilaterally. A good number of visitors from Asia though are not from the south East Asian region. Records, however, show that China with increasingly strong ties to the country, India and UAE have become important players.

Now stakeholders are targeting Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia and certainly China for tourism promotion. The countries already contribute a small proportion of their tourists to South Africa which features attractions much like those of Kenya­wild life, culture, site-seeing and Safaris. A few of them branch out to Zimbabwe, Namibia, Zambia and Swaziland.

Apart from the growing incomes in the region, the issue of population is important. It is estimated that the general area has a middle class reserve of 500 million people waiting to be tapped. China and Japan have 16 million outbound visitors each year. Not to mention that their residents are less targeted by terrorists.

In March, Kenya Airways and the Sarova group of hotels took the first bold step when they flew top Indonesian tour operators from Bangkok. Visitors from the country are expected to start flowing soon. Such excursions have also been arranged for Malaysian and Chinese players.

Kenya has a bitter history that informs the diversification. At first there was the Likoni ethnic

clashes in Mombasa, which busted a tourist boom in October 1997. This made Kenya a non-go area for most Western tourists. The industry was only starting to recover when terrorists attacked Nairobi in August 1998, living over 200 dead in a blast and another 5,000 injured. As if that was not enough, in came September 11 attacks on the US and the devastating travel alerts. Despite thawing relationship with the US and the new Kenya government, efforts to have America review the alerts have never borne any fruit.

While America is not a great contributor to numbers­dominated by the UK and Germany­its citizens who prefer upcountry Safaris to the beaches are the most valued due to their spending per capita. With the government having failed to get any sympathy, despite the industry losing an estimated US$38 million (Sh3 billion) in over a year, the private sector is taking charge.

Lobby Kenya Tourist Federation [KTF] has engaged US public relations firm Patton Boggs LLP to lobby the US. The firm is reported to have contributed some US$235,000 to US political parties­some two-thirds of it to Democrats­and is reportedly close to Democratic candidate John Kerry. It is now hoped this group will succeed where foreign governments and Kenya have failed.

It is still clear that even with the spirited diversification into Asia, Europe remains the core

tourist area. KTB is using some US$7.2 million (Sh560 million) to woo Europeans into Kenya. They made up about two-thirds of recorded tourists last year.

Meanwhile, Kenya has set itself an exalted target of making US$6.2 billion (Sh480 billion) from tourism by 2020, or about half its current GDP. Asia is much part of the ambition.