Tourism earnings increase as arrivals go up

Kenya increased her tourism arrivals and earnings last year, with this year forecast to record further improvement because of increased marketing efforts, a senior government official announced on Monday.Tourist arrivals increased to 1.1 million in 2010, a 100,000 short of the target, but representing a 15 percent growth for the industry from 952,481 tourist arrivals in 2009.

Tourism Minister Najib Balala attributed the growth to change of marketing strategy that focused on marketing in emerging tourism markets like China and Asia .“All these emerging tourism markets have done very well,” Balala told a news conference in Nairobi . Tourism earnings increased 18 percent to 888.7 million U.S. dollars short of 1.2 billion dollars target by the government.

    “We are happy with the results even though we slightly missed what we had projected. This makes 2010 our best year once again after 2007,” the minister said.Total tourist arrivals through the air and sea increased 15.1 per cent to 1.09 million. Over half of the tourists came into the country for holiday while about 17 per cent called for business and conferences.

    “This is the best year in terms of tourist arrivals by sea and air,” he said. He however said cruise arrivals were adversely affected as a result of cancellations due to the insecurity in the Indian Ocean as a result of the piracy activities.

As a result, only 558 arrivals were recorded compared to 12,096 in 2009, said the Kenya government in a statement to the journalists. Major market for Kenya tourism remained Britain followed by United States , Italy and Germany in that order.The minister announced concerted efforts to market in new markets to balance out on Europe and United States markets that are very sensitive to issues like insecurity and political uncertainty.

    “ India is becoming a force to reckon with and will be closely monitored by KTB as performance has improved year on year accounting for 4.5 percent of tourist arrivals. The Indians are also turning out to be high spenders,” Balala said.  “New markets such as India , Russia , China and the Middle East will play a significant role in growing earnings and arrivals in the coming years,” he said.

The minister announced that the government is in the process of turning Mombasa City into a business and conference tourism destination, and concentrate beach tourism around Malindi and Kilifi.“We need to improve our infrastructure, improve our security and give more incentives to the investors so that our country continues to be a growing force in tourism across the continent,” Balala said.

Source = coastweek