Tourism on its knees, sector players expect recovery to take three years

Tourists from Norway dance the night away in Ukunda at the South Coast. The industry is yet to recover from last year's drop occasioned by insecurity. [PHOTO: GIDEON MAUNDU/STANDARD]

The tourism industry, battered by insecurity and travel advisories from traditional markets, can only recover in 2018 if the Government rolls out recovery strategies this year, according to tourism players at the Coast.

The industry has not recovered from last year's drop due to insecurity, which players said led to closure of 22 hotels at the Coast. More are set to close in coming months.

According to Kenya Association of Hotelkeepers and Caterers (KAHC) Coast Branch Executive Officer Sam Ikwaye, more than 30,000 hotel workers have been laid off since last year, after hotels in Kwale and Kilifi closed down.

The ripple effect from the job losses alone could be huge for individual households, whose  breadwinners are now out of work.

Occupancy rates have dropped from an average of 50 per cent last year to less than 20 per cent across the region, with South Coast, Malindi and Watamu areas being the hardest hit. The industry has never witnessed such a slump since the 1997 Likoni clashes and the 2007/2008 post-election violence.

Ikwaye said currently, only one charter plane flies to Mombasa, down from 40 four years ago, but added that before the low season set in, Moi International Airport was receiving seven charter planes.

"I don't expect the sector to recover any time soon. This is because from next year political temperature is expected to go up through 2017. The earliest the sector can recover is 2018, and only if the Government starts to implement the recovery strategies now," said Ikwaye.

He said the country's over-reliance on the British market was due to the fact that Britons are fond of the safari circuit at the Coast. Last year, President Uhuru Kenyatta announced a raft of measures to cushion the sector from the effects of travel advisories by some European countries. However, hotels in Mombasa say the measures did not help.

Laid Off

Many hotels cut down their workforce in May last year and according to Lucy Mutuku, one of the employees who was laid off from one hotel in the North Coast, they have not been called back. "We were laid off in June last year during the low season and we have not been recalled. I had to start a small business of selling bras to survive," said Ms Mutuku.

Serena Beach Hotel General Manager Tuva Mwahunga said the only thing that has helped the sector was the shift to business conferencing.

"Yes, the conference model has worked but that is a very small segment," he said. He said many hotels along the Coast were currently operating at between 25 and 40 per cent bed occupancy.

He called for implementation of the Lucy Karume-led Tourism Recovery Task force report to enable the country to recover in the next three years.

Mr Mwahunga said in the meantime, marketing agencies should focus on local and regional markets and called on county governments at the Coast to invest more in infrastructure.

"We should stop depending on the British market alone because a country like Germany that has not issued travel advisories can plug the gap left by the countries that have done so," said Mwahunga.

Ikwaye and Mwahunga, however, said the sector remains optimistic given that the country's unique products remain intact and have not been destroyed like in Egypt where political upheaval led to chaos that destroyed some of its tourists attraction sites.

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