KENYA
Laikipia Wildlife Forum – Conservation in Action Every Day
East Africa Travel And Tourism News – In response to the Submission of Memorandum Notice published on Monday 7th May 2018 in the Daily Nation, the Conservation Alliance of Kenya and Kenya Wildlife Conservancies Association jointly prepared a memorandum for the Wildlife Conservation and Management (Amendment) Bill, and submitted to the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources and the Environment and Natural Resources Committee of the National Assembly.
The Statute Law (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill, 2018 – pages 354 – 367 are completely different from the Wildlife Conservation and Management (Amendment) Bill.The hard copies of the Wildlife Conservation and Management (Amendment) Bill, 2016 will be presented to the Clerk of National Assembly on 15th May 2018.
KWCA and CAK have requested that the provision in the Statute Law be revised for full implementation of the Act and to clean the typos and errors identified by stakeholders, prior to the Bill being tabled for discussion by the National Assembly.
Find statement and recommendations here
Source: Prof Dr Wolfgang Thome
South Africa To Relax Visa Rule For Kenyans
Kenya is among the African countries that are set to benefit from a new visa regime by South Africa that is aimed at increasing intra-Africa travel.
In what signals thawing relations between the two countries, South Africa has announced it will start issuing visas on arrival for travellers from selected countries, including Kenya.
The two coutries have been involved in a tit-for-tat visa requirement that almost degenerated into a full-blown diplomatic row.
At one point Kenya threatened to introduce a new travel rule requiring South African passport holders to apply for a visa prior to traveling or transiting through the country after the latter refused to reciprocate.
South African Tourism Minister Derek Hanekom has, however, said his country is in the process of revising its visa regime.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Africa Travel Indaba Conference in Durban, Mr Hanekom said Kenya was among the countries that would benefit from the new arrangement, with those who make their applications online set to be issued with the document upon landing.
Henkom said the decision was based purely on prevailing relations between South Africa and specific countries, especially the accruing economic benefits. For example, SA was forced to introduce visa requirement for New Zealand after the country also did the same.
“But I do not really understand why it (visa requirement) has not been lifted on other countries, especially for a country like Kenya,” said Hanekom.
When former SA President Jacob Zuma met with President Uhuru Kenyatta in October 2016, Kenyans hoped the two leaders would help resolve the current bottlenecks in the visa application process.
Zuma, however, instead said there were key underlying issues that needed to be addressed before such a major development could be made.
Minister Hanekom said new President Cyril Ramaphosa had taken a keen interest in the matter as he was the chairman of the committee that was tasked with coming up with revisions to the country’s visa regime.
“It is sad that to connect to some African countries one has to fly to Europe,” said Hanekom.
Source: KATA
KTF Chairman Mohammed Hersi Comes Out Swinging Against Cutting Marketing Budget
When Mohammed Hersi mentioned in his comments shown below that he was one of the few opposing austerity measures by Kenya’s Tourism Ministry and Tourism Board, resulting in cutting down trade show attendance, he may not have been aware of the dozens of comments and mails received by ATCNews.org from stakeholders in Kenya equally opposed to the measure. All of them were firm that ATCNews.org should carry their comments and serve as a platform for their dissent, given how few media organizations in Kenya had taken up their protests.
Said Mohammed:
I am one of the few people who are opposed to the move by KTB to pull out of fairs. Even retaining ITB Berlin was after we raised hue and cry.
I do NOT recall any research or study that was done or shared with us for a buy in that indeed participating in these fairs is waste of time and money.
WTM London is mainly for UK agents and some European. It is even more crucial now that BREXIT is happening and UK is taking back Its rightful No 1 position as a tourist source for Kenya . ITB is for entire EU and other buyers
Indaba is mainly for Safari Buyers esp North America. Australia etc. ATM Dubai is for the GCC and Asia
They talk of ROI. Firstly we have never been told how much we spend on these fairs besides we all fly ourselves and also pay for our accommodation we then share the cost of the stand.
The justification put forward is that we are now adopting a direct consumer approach does not hold any water since it is a known fact that as a safari destination you’ll always need a DMC who in turn works with wholesalers globally. The logistics of attracting a do it yourself client for a safari itinerary is next to impossible more so when we are trying to attract families. You tell me which family from Sydney or Seattle or Tokyo would attempt to do that? Even with a DMC they are never sure about Africa. Kenya as a destination is not some Disney that we can wake up and claim to market direct to the consumer.
You bypass the wholesalers and you avoid the fairs then they’ll happily read your obituary to any potential visitor while our competitors will happily pick the pieces. They have already done it at ATM Dubai and Indaba Durban and soon at WTM London.
We have no issue with digital campaign but that should complement other channels like fairs . Even at our worst image crisis as nation like the PEV of 2007/8 while the peace accord was signed on 28th Feb 2008 the following week we were at ITB telling the world we are open for business. Imagine for once if we missed out?
To KTB if fairs are a failure how comes the rest of the world are all attending?
What is that very special insight that KTB has that has been missed out by the rest of the world who are still wasting their time and money at these fairs so to speak?
If KTB is going digital how come the Tech zones at these fairs are getting bigger and better every year yet all they do is to trade online. Why would Booking.com, Expedias and The likes ” waste ” their money at fairs yet they can comfortably do it in a digital way besides that is precisely what they are Online Travel Agents OTA’s.
Ethiopian Airlines Granted More Flights To Mombasa
Ethiopian Airlines has been granted an additional frequency on the Mombasa route in an agreement between President Uhuru Kenyatta and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali.
The airline will now fly to the coastal town twice a day as Ethiopia and Kenya seek to deepen their trade ties.
“The Kenyan side agreed to grant Ethiopian Airlines a second frequency flight to Mombasa,” said a joint communique from State House after Mr Kenyatta met Dr Ali in Nairobi.
The additional slot to the airline will be a boost to coastal tourism which has been heavily dependent on charter flights from Europe. Currently, only two regional airlines — Ethiopian Airlines and RwandAir — operate scheduled flights to Mombasa from Addis Ababa and Kigali respectively.
Turkish Airlines is the only one from Europe operating scheduled flights between Istanbul and Mombasa.
The state-owned Ethiopian Airlines has raced ahead of rivals Kenya Airways and South African Airways to become Africa’s largest airline by revenue and profit.
Its plan was to more than double its fleet to 120 and become Africa’s biggest airline by 2025, but it already has 100 planes flying to dozens of destinations from Asia to South America, including four US cities.
Kenya Airways plans its first direct flight to the US in October. Hoteliers at the Coast have been lobbying for more international direct flights to Mombasa to ease air transport through Moi International Airport and attract more tourists.
Currently, tourists coming to Kenya using other global carriers must first land at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport before connecting to Mombasa.
Source: KATA
UGANDA
Government To Spend $2.7m On Marketing Uganda’s Tourism
Uganda will spend at least $1.2 million (Shs 4.4bn) on marketing the country’s tourism potential, an addition to the $1.5 million that was spent last year.
State minister for Tourism, Godfrey Kiwanda, says government will hire three more public relations firms from China, Japan and Gulf states to market Uganda’s tourism potential. He revealed that each firm will pocket $ 400,000 (Shs 1.4 billion).
In 2016, Uganda hired three public relations firms in German, UK and America to market the tourism sector with the aim of bolstering the number of foreign tourists. The three firms including PHG Consulting headquartered in USA, Kamageo of UK and KPRN of German pocketed $500,000 (Shs 1.8bn) each.
Kiwanda says government will also renew the contracts of the three firms. He says the overall assignment given to these firms is to leverage Uganda as a prime tourism travel destination, adding that the names of the new firms will be unveiled soon.
Addressing journalists on what the ministry of Tourism has done in implementing the NRM manifesto at Media Centre on Tuesday, Kiwanda argued that marketing of Uganda tourism potential has for instance resulted into a 17 per cent increase of tourists from Germany where one of the companies publicising the country is based.
Kiwanda said Uganda received 1.37 million tourists last year. The country targets to increase the number of tourists to 5 million by 2022 per year.
According to World Bank, tourism is now the leading foreign exchange earner for Uganda, bringing in about $1.4 billion annually, which is 26 per cent of its total foreign exchange earnings and 9.9 per cent of its GDP.
The sector employs about 520,000 people directly, and one million more indirectly, 70 per cent of them women and youth.
The World Bank, which assisted Uganda in negotiating the contracts with the three PR firms in November 2017 reported that the marketing campaign has had £1.2 million worth of media coverage in the UK market, €2 million in other markets.
Source: The Observer
TANZANIA
Tanzania Tourist Board Participates in International German Exhibition
In promoting tourism business, Tanzania Tourist Board (TTB) in collaboration with Arusha International Conference Center (AICC) are participating in the International Meetings and Exhibitions 2018, (IMEX) events taking place in Frankfurt Germany.
In a statement released yesterday by TTB Managing Director Devota Mdachi, it was revealed that the largest tourism conference will be held from May 15 to 17. It is the first time for the board to participating.
She said the event offers Tanzania an excellent opportunity to showcase its tourism assets as well as to meet with key players in the international meetings industry.
“We were able to meet with a number of international professional event’s organizers and inform them of the opportunities available in Tanzania. There is great interest in Tanzania as a tourist destination,” said the TTB boss.
Ms Mdachi added that, “We believe that the establishment of a Convention Bureau will help to increase the number of business events and visitors to Tanzania.
Tanzania was also represented in the IMEX Policy Forum which attracted several politicians, high level officials from Ministries, Tourism Boards and associations from all over the world.
The three days event has attracted more than 3,500 companies from 150 countries from all over the world. Tanzania is also represented by Mount Meru Hotel, EastEnders Tours and Safaris, Studio Red Conferences and Leopard Tours Ltd at the exhibition.
Statistics from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism showed that number of tourists has grown to 1.3 million in last year from 1.2 million in 2016. The sector’s revenue also increased to Sh5.2 trillion in 2017 from Sh4.6 trillion in previous. Latest figures from World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) showed that Africa attracted 62 million visitors in 2017, representing nothing less than 8 per cent year on year growth.
Last month TTB was also presented the country in the World Travel Market Africa in Cape Town whereby a number of Tanzanian companies participated, 17 companies attended under TTB, 10 through Kill Fair and 20 traveled alone.
Source: AllAfrica
