Kenya’s Marketing effeorts increases number of tourists.

Revenue from tourism last year fell by 54 percent compared with 2007 which had seen a record number of up to 1.8 million tourists coming to holiday in an apparently politically stable and fast-growing country.

“Back then things looked so good that we made additional investments in anticipation of a bumper year in 2008,” reminisces Lacty de Sousa, general manager of an international tour company.

Among other things, his company bought eight new land cruisers to meet the peak New Year season demand in 2008. These stand idle, parked outside his office.

All tour plans were shattered when catastrophe struck on the penultimate day of 2007.

After many years of a smooth political transition, having passed peacefully through a contentious constitutional referendum in 2005, and estimated economic growth of six to eight percent-to which tourism is the third largest contributor-Kenya suddenly plunged into a two-month long period of uncertainty.

Most tourists booked for that period did not arrive or diverted to some other destination. Those already in the country left.

Thanks to former United Nations chief Kofi Annan’s intervention, political rivals decided to mend fences soon and by the middle of 2008 the industry had recovered slightly. But it was still down by 32 percent against the same period in 2007. Hundreds of lodges and hotels remain closed. Many more Kenyans have lost their jobs.

But de Sousa argues that, rather than last year’s political violence, the bleak outlook in 2009 is more due to the global financial meltdown and Kenya’s inability to market itself.

“Not even one foreign tourist was hurt or touched in the post-election violence. The country has regained a semblance of stability and remains a hospitable place for foreign tourists. But not many of them are taking holidays, in any case, as the financial crisis restricts their mobility.”

The worst-hit by this, he says, are those at the bottom of the tourism industry’s chain-waiters, drivers, bartenders, guides -who lose often the only means of subsistence for them when they lose their jobs.

Given this dismal picture, it was puzzling to find at Christmas and New Year that almost all the main lodges and resorts were fully booked. Surely, the tourists have come back!

Julie Hamon, a marketing executive from Paris, was on the last flight from France that landed at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta Airport on December 30, 2007 before violence engulfed Kenya and tourism came to a virtual halt.

She, like hundreds of others planning to spend their New Year holidays in Kenya, was never able to leave the airport and diverted to other destinations. This year she’s back again.

“Nobody had foreseen what happened last year. But it seems to be an aberration and I find Kenya as hospitable to foreigners as ever,” she tells IPS.

Other signs, such as failed attempts to make reservations at any of the better known safaris and hotels and ever-rising transport and accommodation charges, also point to the fact that tourists are coming back.

In the third quarter of 2008 more than 5.65 million tourists arrived in Kenya and the numbers are likely to be even higher for the November 2008-January 2009 period. But tour operators argue it does not as yet represent a full recovery.

Other than the unmatched beauty of Kenya’s safaris and mountain and beach holiday resorts, its public culture of hospitality guarantees that tourists stay for longer. Having said that, The country’s image as a peaceful place was badly dented and then the global economic recession hit us, so the industry is in special need of an enabling regulatory framework – of pro-tourism government policies.