Editorial

EDITORIAL

Tourism in Kenya, what to expect in august

How to stay between slow restart and waiting

28-06-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo

Realistically, tourism Kenya is not looking forward to August as a release from the "red" that has reigned for the past year and a half. Red is the colour of restrictions but also of loss-making budgets of companies in the sector. Red is the semaphore of too many world nations to fly to Nairobi and Mombasa and red for many seems to be the sunset of a certain type of travel and holidays.
But, as the proverbs say, "red in the evening good weather is hoped for" and as a Livorno poet who is not Armando Tanzini used to sing, "hope, shoot, hope". Therefore, those who have made their investments and have always known the ups and downs of this country, of the vicissitudes transversally linked to tourism (diseases, terrorism, economic crises, erupting volcanoes, civil wars and so on), cannot but check their magazines and prepare to fire new cartridges, trusting in the passion that many world travellers have for Kenya and its nature, in the attractive power of the warm climates in the winter season in the West and in the other factors that have always made equatorial Africa, and especially the best equipped in the field of hospitality, attractive.
Trusting in these factors, next August will be a minor month but also a good test case for a 'soft' restart.
As is well known, you could not arrive from Europe yet for pure tourism. The conditional is obligatory, because for some nations discretion remains with the citizen, while in any case so-called 'mass tourism' is banned.
In Italy, the ban is total on paper, and the deadline extended by Prime Minister Draghi last May and valid until 31 July could be extended for another three months. Realistically, on 30 October the state of emergency that has created several bands of accessible destinations, accessible with reservations or taboos (the so-called "E" band, to which, alas, Kenya belongs) should come to an end. But this does not only depend on Europe, but also on Kenya's health security and the effects of its vaccination campaign.
In this sense, Nairobi's line, since the beginning of the year when millions of doses of vaccine were expected to arrive, is very clear: 'if they give them to us for free, we will take them and vaccinate everyone'.
So far, at the end of June, the vaccines that have arrived are a little more than a million and a half, i.e. a total coverage of 1.2% of the population, considering that they are AstraZeneca vaccines, so in double dose to ensure provisional immunisation.
In August, it was announced that 13 million doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccine would arrive, also in a free packet, i.e. a single vaccine covering more than 20% of the population. If this is the case, it is to be hoped that by October Kenya will be considered a safe destination.
Especially if the government confirms the directive proposed last April by the Ministry of Tourism, to have all tourism employees vaccinated in order to create the so-called "covid-free corridor" for tourist destinations, which is also a clear desire of the Italian business sector of Malindi and Watamu and important tour operators of our house who are also owners of charter flights, ready to resume next December to land in Mombasa.
All this leads us to assume that we will not see a 'serious' recovery of tourism before then. So what can we expect next August?
First and foremost, as was the case (satisfactorily) at Christmas 2020 and partly at Easter 2021, focus on the holidays of Kenyans. Domestic airlines organising domestic flights from Nairobi to the coast are starting to receive bookings and so are hotels.
In addition to them, there are requests for safaris, especially for the Maasai Mara, which as every year at this time can offer the unique spectacle of the great migration. The United States has recently reopened to tourism to Kenya and is the number one international traffic for high level safaris. Unfortunately, from this point of view, the coast cannot compete because both local tourism and the 'repeaters' who frequent it during these restricted periods do not prefer the savannah.
For the salvation of Tsavo East and West there are tourists from Eastern Europe: Nyali and Diani receive charters from Ukraine, in Malindi Poles will arrive and Watamu hopes to start hosting Russians. People who do not disdain safaris, just as they are not strictly lovers of the sea.
In short, looking at the glass as half full, the Kenyan summer will not be worse than last year's, looking at it as half empty, we will still have to tighten our belts and we can understand those structures, especially those with many rooms, which will wait a few more months and good news to reopen. For all the others, the advice is: whether the glass is half full or half empty, let's drink from it. 

 

TAGS: turismo kenyaagosto kenyaripresa kenyariapertura kenya

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