Social media holds key in Kenya’s bid to boost tourism

By WINSLEY MASESE

NAIROBI, KENYA: Use of the social media has been identified as an incredible tool to drive Kenya’s tourism arrivals and revenues upwards.

E-Tourism Frontiers Chief Executive Damian Cook noted that the use of traditional methods to assist in the search for products and information is fast declining and their place taken over by social media.

“Posting pictures on social platforms such as Facebook and Instagram can add value to the products offered,” he said.

He noted that about 96 per cent of prospective tourists use the Internet to search for information, followed by relatives and friends sharing the information about their sites.

Friends and relatives, he argued, continuously update their followers on which part of the world they are in and how spectacular it is. Cook was speaking ahead of the two-day E-Tourism East African Conference, to be held in Nairobi between June 9 and 10, this year.

In its fourth edition, the conference seeks to assist the tourism stakeholders reconnect and learn about the latest online tourism and travel developments and technologies. Prospective participants include Google and Facebook.

It is estimated that there are about 1.2 billion subscribers on Facebook and each has an average of 250 followers.

“Social media is more popular and powerful than the broadcast and print media combined,” he said, adding that 91 per cent of adults use the social media every day.

 As a consequence, the market has to strategise on how to sell to the younger and connected millennial generation since this is where the future market lies.

“Growth in the travel industry is now on the amount of revenue generated and not the number of arrivals and stakeholders need a re-think on how to create experience and value,” he said, adding that tourists are prepared to pay more for this.

TELL GOOD STORIES

Cook said that Kenyan hospitality industry needs to differentiate and tell good stories about the products through social media such since brochures make a lot of noise.

This enables the subscribers to generate content on their own, which users are increasingly consuming above anything else.

“Since users control the market, you need to work with them,” Cook stated. He noted that people get referrals on the site and since they send their experiences before they get home for a personal experience, the social network is a strong tool to drive the industry.

The youth are some of the significant market that uses the social media to communicate every single minute hence a rich market to tap into. “The visitors want to show off their experiences by taking the best possible photo of the hotel camp,” said Cook.

One such example is an eight-minute video, Battle of the Kruger, which had generated about 74 million hits by yesterday.

As a result many tourists visit the site of the incident. “Nothing can give you that reach and the cost of marketing is free,” said Cook.