SPEECH BY CABINET SECRETARY FOR EAST FRICAN AFFAIRS COMMERCE AND TOURISM DURING NAIROBI TOURISM STAKEHOLDERS AND MDR SUMMIT HELD AT CROWNE PLAZA, NAIROBI 21st October 2015
Directors of KTB
KTB Managing Director,
CEOs of Various Institutions Present,
Stakeholders in the sector,
MDRs,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It gives me great pleasure to join you this morning as we interact with the Marketing Development Representatives (MDRs) from various tourist source markets from across the globe.
This meeting is happening two days after a successful one with the coast tourism stakeholders held in Mombasa.
Indeed this forum has a lot of significance besides providing yet another opportunity for us to reflect on new strategies and ideas that will help us reap maximum benefits from the tourism sector.
From this interaction, we shall be able to get first-hand and crucial information about the various tourist source markets from our MDRs.
Ladies and Gentlemen
The travel industry is dynamic. New emerging global travel trends demand corresponding strategies and tactics to confront them.
These emerging trends largely depend on market intelligence, a key component of any business undertaking.
This forum therefore provides us with an opportunity to be appraised with the emerging global marketing trends and changing needs of today’s traveler.
Ladies and Gentlemen
I am aware that a number of deliberations that are lined up for you will be key in our agenda of growing tourism and I therefore take this early opportunity to wish you fruitful deliberations
Ladies and Gentlemen
Before I officially open this summit, allow me to comment on the strategic position Nairobi city occupies as far as tourism sector is concerned.
Nairobi being a region’s business hub has played and continues to play a key role in enhancement of conference tourism.
The city has hosted and continues to host key international events that have contributed to enhancement of country’s profile.
The Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES)) held in Nairobi three months ago and attended by USA President Barrack Obama is a case in point.
Other upcoming events to be held in the city within the year include World Conference on PR in Emerging Economies, The Pope’s visit, African Travel Association (ATA), the WTO MC10 ministerial conference among others.
It is indeed clearer that the MICE segment in Nairobi is Key and that explains the reason why a number of new investments on accommodation facilities have come up in the recent past.
Some high-end hotel investments we have witnessed so far include international hotel chains such as, Radisson Blu, Kempinski, Marriott Hotels among others.
Ladies and Gentlemen
The MICE segment will only thrive if we pay attention to other ingredients such as quality services within the facilities as well short city tour itineraries for the clients.
Kenya is perhaps one of the cities in the world with a National Park within its jurisdiction. This is an opportunity we must grab as a value addition to the conferring services.
To boost MICE, we are soon setting up a multi-million state of the art conference facility at the Bomas of Kenya to support Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC).
Further the ongoing expansion of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) will increase on passenger capacity therefore ease of access to Nairobi.
Ladies and Gentlemen
We are all alive to the fact that the performance of the sector has recorded an all-time low in some times now as a result of myriad of challenges key among them being insecurity.
Besides insecurity, other challenges such as travel advisories, tourism pricing, quality of product and services, lack of enforcement standards, poor infrastructure leading to over reliance on few tourism products have made the sector vulnerable.
This notwithstanding, our transformative agenda in the tourism sector has been to identify mitigating measures.
In this regard, my Ministry is implementing some of the recommendations of The Tourism Recovery Task Force.
To this end, we have embarked on the implementation phase of among others;
1. Enhanced security
The government in the financial year 2015/16 has enhanced funding to the Interior Ministry. This is aimed at improving security; a key aspect in maintaining a thriving economy which tourism is a key contributor.
2. Minimizing negative international media publicity
As a result of negative publicity by the media, our destination image has been perceived negatively. This has dealt a blow to propensity of visitors to travel to Kenya.
To this end, the Ministry has contracted an international PR Agency, Graylings to implement activities aimed at revamping Kenya’s image abroad. We have also launched a campaign dubbed Make it Kenya as part of re-branding the destination.
3. Implementing tourism marketing and promotional campaigns
As part of other marketing programmes, we are soon rolling out a one-year long global media advertising campaign through CNN.
We have agreed on salient issues that had held the execution of the campaigns and we are now set to go.
The campaigns will target key source markets such as Europe, America, Asia, Africa, and the rest of the world.
We believe that constant positive messages through advertisement will help mitigate on the negative stories about the destinations in the country as noticed in the recent past in the wake of insecurity.
4. Increased funding
The commitment of the government to the sector has been demonstrated by the enhanced funding to the Tourism sector to the tune of 5.2 billion. This will see the sector engage in key strategies towards recovery.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Besides the traditional markets that have continued to contribute more in terms of arrivals, emerging markets are our next frontier. Markets such as China, India and UAE have shown all indications for growth and resilience and we are ready to invest in them.
Domestic tourism is also our key focus market and I am happy to note that this segment has recorded an impressive growth in the past years.
Currently domestic tourism contributes about 46.9% of the total bed nights up from 37% in the past years.
We hope grow this segment further as we cast our net wider to include the East Africa countries.
5. Improving infrastructure to increase access to major tourism hubs
Through the inter-government agency efforts, face-lift and expansion of JKIA to handle more passengers is ongoing. Air strips to various tourism destination as well as roads continue to receive considerable improvements.
To ease travel, we recently re-introduced the manual visa application to run concurrently with the newly introduced e-visa until such a time that the latter will seamlessly be applicable to our visitors. This is in line with the world trend on easing travel for visitors.
Other measures taken include promotion of East African Tourist Visa to ease travel across borders, investment in infrastructure, such as roads, airports and railways.
6. Tourism product Diversification
Besides beach and wildlife products, Kenya has a rich array of tourism products. Niche products such as sports, culture and heritage identified under the vision 2030 are being marketed.
7. Promotion of Tourism Investments
To attract and sustain the required tourist numbers, the Ministry has initiated modalities of promotion of investments in the sector with a view of attracting tourism investments portfolios.
Besides notable investment in hotels within Nairobi city, other areas have also attracted investors.
They include Billionaire Club in Malindi and Mahali Mzuri Luxury Camp in Maasai Mara among others.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
These are some of the proposals that my Ministry with other players is implementing.
Our efforts on re-branding the country’s image and building its profile have gone a notch higher.
Indeed all these are signs of confidence on our destination and an acknowledgement of our concerted efforts to raising the profile of Kenya.
In conclusion, all these programmes already implemented and ongoing require full support from the private sector.
I therefore call on you to join me in moving this sector to the next level.
Finally, let me wish all the MDR’S who have traveled from various source markets a happy stay in Kenya and safe journey when you travel back to your homes.
I now declare the 2015 MDR Summit, Nairobi Sector officially opened
Mrs. Phyllis Kandie, Cabinet Secretary East African Affairs Commerce and Tourism
