GROWTH IN TRAVEL TO AFRICA TO REMAIN MARGINAL IN 2014
(Posted 19th December 2014)
Travel to Africa in 2014 will remain at the bottom of the global growth rate with just 3 percent, and this figure is largely driven by a strong recovery across the continent’s North African destinations in particular to Egypt which has undergone a miraculous transformation to the better again.
Travel to West Africa is in fact expected to reduce, largely as a result of the Ebola outbreak in Liberia, Guinea and other countries. However the entire sub Saharan Africa appears to have suffered from the knock on effect of the Ebola outbreak and in East Africa has the downturn in fortunes in Kenya equally affected the entire region and either lowered forecasts of arrivals or as in Kenya directly led to negative growth.
The Americas are leading in 2014 with over 8 percent more arrivals, while other continents like South Asia with 8 percent, India with 7 – and expected to grow stronger now that many nationalities can obtain Visa on arrival – North East Asia with a respectable 7 percent and Oceania with a 6 percent growth.
Some countries saw double digit increases like South Korea and Japan while the USA’s and Mexico’s growth was described by UNWTO as nothing short than extraordinary.
Globally will over 1.1 billion travelers have taken to the road, rail and air, a new overall record and while the stats will only become available in full in late January 2015 can the trend no longer be shaken.
Africa’s market share in global travel, as a result of the below average growth, has again eroded and while some destinations like Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and South Africa are doing better than average has 2014 been largely a year of gloom and doom for many of the traditional safari destinations.
Efforts to get data from across Eastern Africa were not successful as tourism bureaucrats and marketers are probably still sitting on them wondering how to explain the trend away.
