Africa-Press – Kenya. Lack of political goodwill and implementing of existing strategies is derailing growth of the tourism sector, industry players now say.
Kenya has in the past 12 years formulated at least eight policy papers and strategies targeting to grow the sector.
These are aimed at guiding the tourism agencies’ achieve their mandates and include, ‘polishing the Jewel 2010, a prescriptive value chain analysis of Kenya’s tourism industry and the National Tourism Strategy 2013-2018.
The country also had in place the Tourism Sector Plan 2013-2018 which includes Magical Kenya brand refreshment; global brand awareness campaign, source market penetration initiative, marketing domestic tourism and development of niche tourism products such as MICE.
The government further developed a Domestic Tourism Strategy 2020,
National Tourism Blueprint 2030, the National Tourism Agenda 2018-2022 and the New Vision for Tourism 2022 launched in May 2022, as both post-Covid-19 recovery and tourism marketing strategy.
“Kenya’s tourism industry does not lack sound growth and development strategies but implementation is wanting,” the Tourism Professional Association (TPA) chairman Daniel Muoki said.
TPA is a self-regulated professional body for hospitality and tourism educators and practitioners.
Leadership of agencies under the ministry has also come under scrutiny as majority have had long-serving acting chiefs.
Some of the agencies that have had acting CEOs include the Tourism Fund, Tourism Research Institute (TRI), Wildlife Research and Training Institute, Utalii College and the Kenya National Convention Bureau.
“The new Cabinet Secretary should start by ensuring parastatals have substantive office holders. Most have been acting for so long without any good reason,” Kenya Association of Hotelkeepers and Caterers executive (Coast), Sam Ikwaye, said.
According to TPA, Kenya’s tourism industry has been reactionary driven by knee-jack strategies .
“Most of the time, it’s either a strategy that forms an agency to deal with the occurrence or an agency develops a strategy to deal with the occurrence,” Muoki said.
In all the policies, the focus has been on increasing tourism contribution to GDP, increasing tourist arrivals, improving the quantity and quality of tourism infrastructure, improving the quality of tourist products, as well as diversifying the product offer from the traditional beach and wildlife attractions.
The sector has however been among the first causality of budget cuts, dampening marketing activities.
This has seen Kenya lag behind competitors such as Tanzania, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and other African countries with extras to offer, especially wildlife and adventure.
Some strategies to market the country also overlap raising the question of the vision and motivation of their development in the first place.
“Further, one wonders about the level of success of their implementation,” Muoki posed noting that the last 10 years has seen the highest number of strategies but little achievement in terms of growth.
Industry players also want implementation of the Open Skies Policy and allowing more airlines to fly into other Kenyan airports especially Mombasa, Malindi, and Kisumu.
There is also a call for meaningful tourism product development in collaboration with counties, to enhance diversity .
They also want the number of licenses charged to hospitality establishments reduced, promoting professional management of tourism and hospitality affairs, and development of human resources.
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