BEST BEACHES – BEST RESORTS – BEST AIRLINES BUT #AFRICA DOES NOT MAKE A GREAT IMPACT
(Posted 29th December 2018)
Africa’s beaches and resorts, but also her airlines, have to go back to the drawing board for 2019, if they want to make a greater impact on the global top of the pops list issued every year by TripAdvisor.
As in the past were few locations and properties included, and in fact not a single African airline made it into the global top ten, once again dominated by Asian and Gulf carriers like Qatar Airways, Emirates, Singapore Airlines, EVA Air and Korean among others.
When it comes to beaches, and Africa has some spectacular locations such as Diani Beach in Kenya, some of the beaches along the Mozambique coast or in the Seychelles, Africa this year did not much better.
Nungwi Beach in Zanzibar came in on place 23, Sharm el Luli in Marsa Alam, Egypt in place 22 and Anse Lazio on the Seychelles’ island of Praslin in place 15.
The rest of the top 25 are from around the world and, it must be said, often from destinations visited by millions of tourists, the most likely reason why they voted for the beaches they saw, which by expert opinion may not be the best on a pure logical criteria basis. It is simply that much less visitors come to Zanzibar, the Seychelles or Diani Beach to know and appreciate and, most crucially, vote for them.
The situation is almost the same for resorts, where in the top 25 global best resorts the Baraza Resort & Spa in Zanzibar came in as number 25.
The Oberoi in Mauritius claimed 20th spot and that is where the presence of Africa’s top resorts already ended, again probably due to the number of visitors to these destinations and the numbers staying in these resorts.
There is clearly much space for improvement, in both the selection process as well as in the quality of Africa’s location marketing and their resorts but, as and when the message gets across to the highly paid for marketing staff of tourism boards and PR agencies, there will be hope that they focus some more in getting their destination, their attractions and their resorts into such lists.
Congrats to those from Africa who made it into the top 25 and better fortunes for 2019.
