East meets West at AKWAABA
(By Dennis Gathanju of Safari Communications, Nairobi, Kenya 26th November 2015)
Event registers many first-time entrants and visitors from across Africa and beyond
The 11th edition of the AKWAABA Africa Travel Market kicked off to a remarkable start this year. After experiencing one of the most challenging events last year that was largely overshadowed by the Ebola crisis in West Africa, the event re-bounded this year to register massive new registrations and entrants from all across Africa and beyond.
According to the organizers, the event this year was meant to build onto the efforts of encouraging cross-border travel and consequently, intra-Africa tourism, which has for a long time lagged behind, but has over the last couple of years seen a surge in terms of participation from players both in the public and private sectors in almost all across Africa.
It was under this theme that the organizers of the event and many tourism stakeholders across Africa decided to award Ms. Waturi wa Matu, the former co-ordinator of the East Africa Tourism Platform (EATP) the African Legend of Travel Award in recognition of her tireless efforts that resulted into the establishment of a single tourist visa regime that is currently implemented by Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. Under this regime, tourists and business travellers can access all the three countries using a single visa. This makes it efficient, cost-effective and saves travellers too much hustle of applying for several visas and therefore gives affords them an opportunity to experience more of East Africa.
For the first time in the edition’s history has Dubai Tourism, Government of Dubai department announced its arrival at the AKWAABA largely driven by the fact that Nigeria continues to register some of the highest arrivals to Dubai.
According to Ikechi Uko, the organizer of the AKWAABA, Nigeria sends more business persons and tourists to Dubai than all African countries combined.
Says he: “This means that Nigeria, as a source market, cannot be ignored any more and the Government of Dubai has noticed this. Nigeria is not only offering the volume of travel; it is also offering the spend. Nigerians spend more on travel than any other Africans.”
Talal Al Suwaidi, the Manager of Exhibitions and Stakeholder Relations from the Dubai Co-operation for Tourism and Commerce Marketing said that Dubai was a willing participant to travel and tourism not only in Nigeria, but all across Africa as it has continued to see an increase of tourists and business persons going to the emirate to relax with their families and/or to conduct business.
Ms. Stella Obinwa the Regional Director for Africa at Dubai Tourism underlined this by saying that Dubai Tourism was keen on engaging constantly with not only the trade in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa, but also directly with the consumers.
Said she: “Over the next few weeks, we will be running a campaign that will bring in 200 Nigerians to the Emirate of Dubai on an all-expenses paid trip that will mark our direct engagement with the consumers in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa.
“Furthermore, we will be working closely with tourism stakeholders from Dubai to further engage with these consumers in a number of ways that includes hosting an elaborate road-show all across Nigeria whereby we can inform these consumers what Dubai has to offer in terms of business and travel opportunities. Our desire is to inform and educate them on what they can see and do in Dubai.”
Evelyn Mahlaba, the Regional Director Africa for the South African Tourism Board who led the South Africa tourism delegation noted that this year South Africa did register a marginal dip in arrivals, especially from Nigeria by as much as 7 per cent. While she would not attribute this to the negative effects of the much-hyped xenophobic attacks that happened earlier this year in South Africa, she was quick to note that there was however a sharp rise in the spending of Nigerians visiting South Africa which rose by 27 per cent.
Said she: “Nigeria continues to be one of the most important source markets for South Africa, inspite of the challenges that we have faced over the past year, largely because Nigeria was in election mode and this sort of impacted on the number of arrivals into South Africa. However, the Nigerians visiting South Africa are travelling more within South Africa with an average stay being between 5 to 7 days.
They have been principally visiting the Gauteng region, especially within Johannesburg, but we have noticed that Cape Town has been receiving an increase number of visitors from Nigeria.
Kenya sent a much larger delegation this year that was led by Ms. Jacinta Nzioka, the Director of Marketing, at the Kenya Tourism Board. This further underlines the importance of Nigeria as a source market for Kenya as it further seeks to enhance its growing popularity amongst Nigerian travelers, many of who travel through Nairobi to other destinations, mainly in the Middle East, India and China for trade, business, tourism and even medical travel.
Said she: “We are excited to be attending AKWAABA and this time we have brought in our traditional dancers to showcase what Kenya has to offer. Furthermore, we are also here to build on the relationship that we have now established with Wakanow.com, which is one of the largest tourism portals across West Africa.
“This underlines our commitment to growing intra-Africa travel, which will go a long way towards forging mutual co-operation between ourselves as Africans and consequently drive trade and investments.”
Other countries such as Rwanda and Ethiopia were represented at the showpiece event through their diplomats and national airlines.
Regional countries from across West Africa also sent huge trade delegations drawn from government agencies, tour operators and hoteliers. The show was further underlined by the presence of the Cross River State Governor Benedict Ayade who hailed the AKWAABA as major event in Nigeria that continues to draw the attention of local, regional and international tourism experts and stakeholders. He further hailed the vision of the organizer Ikechi Uko for his passion for tourism, not only in Nigeria and West Africa, but all across the African continent. Cross River State will later in the year host the Calabar Carnival, arguably Africa’s most colourful and most vibrant cultural and dance carnival in its capital city of Calabar.
As the 11th edition of the AKWAABA drew to a close, it has thus far been one of the largest and most successful ever. The three-day event recorded numerous first-time visitors, some who came from as far as Europe and Asia. Tanzania was represented for the first time and it is expected that many more African countries will attend in the future with a view to taking advantage of the business and networking opportunities offered at West Africa’s largest travel, tourism, hospitality and aviation event.
