The Kenyan tourism sector is back on a profitable path after setbacks spawned by negative publicity in the past five years, the state-run Kenya Tourism Board (KTB) said on Monday.
The sector is expecting its revenue to increase by three billion shillings ($37,5-million) this year, up from 25-billion ($312,5-million) it earned in 2003, said KTB spokesperson Rose Kwena.
”The sector has improved and is on a profitable path. In the coastal region for example, hotels are currently 70% full while in national parks, they are packed,” said Kwena.
The KTB is in charge of marketing tourism in the east African country.
The return to profitability is ”because of a vigorous promotion campaign, worth 500-million shillings ($6,2-million) that we have been carrying out across the world,” Kwena added.
Kenyan tourism suffered following the 1998 bombings of the United States embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, in which 224 people died, and the November 2002 car-bomb attack on an Israeli-owned hotel in the Indian Ocean city of Mombasa, which claimed 18 lives. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attacks.
After the 2002 attack in Mombasa, Australia, Belgium, Germany, the United States and Britain warned their nationals against visiting Kenya. Britain went even further and barred United Kingdom-based airlines from flying to Kenya for three months.
The advisories and flights bans meant many Kenyan tourist spots were deserted and many workers in the sector lost their jobs.
With several Western countries lifting the negative travel advisories, Kenya launched a major promotional drive, targeting tourists from Europe and Asia, and the campaign was paying off, Kwena pointed out.
But she explained that the sector would temporarily suffer from last week’s decision by domestic charter company East African Safari Air (Easa) to suspend flights to Europe over unpaid debts amounting to $15-billion.
The airline was expected to bring in about 30 000 passengers from Europe up to the end of 2004.
”It will temporarily affect the tourism sector, but in the long term other airlines will move in,” she said, explaining that other commercial and charter flights will take care of passengers from Italy, France and Britain. – Sapa-AFP