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Kenya Tourism Report Q3 2011
Business Monitor International, June 2011, Pages: 45
The Kenya Tourism Report provides industry professionals and strategists, corporate analysts, tourism associations, government departments and regulatory bodies with independent forecasts and competitive intelligence on Kenya's tourism industry.
Kenya’s tourism industry is in recovery mode. In May 2011, the government released data which showed that tourist arrivals in Q111 were 15% higher than they had been in Q110. Encouragingly, the growth has been boosted by a surge in arrivals from ‘new’ markets such as the UAE and China. Several airlines, including Gulf Air and Etihad, have indicated that they will commence flights to Kenya by the end of 2011.
Kenya, in common with many of its neighbours, has been a beneficiary from the turmoil in North Africa and the Middle East. Visitors have looked further south at destinations such as Kenya that are seen to be safe. Also, from the UK market in particular, the level of interest in Kenya has picked up because of its link to the Royal Wedding. (It was on holiday in Kenya where Prince William proposed to Catherine Middleton, as she was then known.)
We also note a number of other specific positives. The latest growth in numbers of tourists, and 18% expansion in tourism receipts in calendar 2010 mean that the industry has returned to long-term trends for most metrics. The economic outlook is quite bright. We expect the economy to grow by an average 5.6% during the 2011-2015 period. Despite risks from a potential rise in inflation and/or poor weather conditions for farming, we still expect to see strong domestic conditions as well as growth in tourism and other export earnings. Passenger numbers on Kenya Airways were up 13.5% for the first quarter of 2011 against the same quarter in 2010 (which itself was much improved over both 2008 and 2009). Alongside growth in discount airline passenger numbers, the country’s aviation industry is more optimistic than it has been in some years.
On the other hand, naturally, there are also some risks to our generally positive forecast:
- The always tenuous coalition that has been in place since the disputed 2007 elections and the violence that followed is coming under increased strain in the lead up to the 2012 polls. Political instability could again be a blight on the country.
- In Transparency International’s 2010 Corruption Perception Index, Kenya’s position fell for the third year in a row. It now stands at 154th out of 178 countries surveyed. Alongside the influence of organised crime, most notably Mungiki, corruption stands as an obstacle to the development of a modern functioning tourism infrastructure.
On balance, though, it seems reasonable to be very optimistic about the long-term prospects for Kenya’s tourism industry.
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