Edelweiss to leave Mombasa due to low demand

EDELWEISS CONFIRMS WITHDRAWAL FROM MOMBASA ROUTE NEXT WINTER SEASON

(Posted 25th February 2014)

News swept the Mombasa tourism fraternity that the current Edelweiss charter operation, which serves both Kilimanjaro and Mombasa, will next winter season not return to Mombasa due to a lack of sufficient demand for seats.

This will add more concerns among the coast based hotel and resort operators, already suffering from several flights having been withdrawn from the route causing significantly lower occupancies this year compared to previous years.

Coast hoteliers have been battling a negative trend since late last year, when in the run up to the March general elections in Kenya key touroperators proved to be overly cautious in their contracting and shifted long haul traffic from Kenya’s traditional markets to other destinations.

While the elections, as predicted by the way, went on peacefully and resulted in a new government, that government has since come under sustained criticism for increasing the tax burden on tourism products at a time when there was a downward trend in arrivals and for spending far less money on tourism marketing than the main gurus projected was needed to roll out a global recovery marketing campaign.

While KTB is trying to promote Kenya and the beach resorts, within their means that is considering their budget constraints, the coast resort operators in particular claim not enough is being done, while at the same time demanding open air access by foreign airlines to Mombasa, where presently only Ethiopian, Turkish Airlines, RwandAir and Air Uganda are flying scheduled services into Moi International Airport.

The announcement that Edelweiss will not come to Mombasa next winter is seen as another challenge the hotelier have to meet and there will no doubt be substantial lobbying when Kenya attends the forthcoming ITB Tourism Trade Fair in Berlin in March.

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