A new look at the Kenyan Tourism Industry.

Over the last four years Kenya’s tourism industry, which accounts for about 11% of her GDP and stands at position 87 globally according to mecometer.com, has been facing turbulent times occasioned by insecurity threats from the Al shabaab Terrorist outfit. This in turn has forced many western countries to issue travel alerts hence a record low numbers in tourist arrivals. As the government tackles the insecurity headache through various state organs, infrastructure development and creating tax incentives to lure travellers and visitors to our country there is an urgent need for tourism players and the relevant ministry to invest heavily in the following areas.

Geothermal spas: To date Kenya has only one geothermal spa located in Naivasha despite the fact that places like Bogoria, Kapedo, Homabay and Nakuru are ripe for such geothermal health related tourism .Iceland, a country well known for its geothermal spas  receives close to  over 400,000  tourist per year .Opening of the first geothermal spa in East and central Africa in Naivasha Kenya more others to follow.

Music Tourism Festivals: More focus need to be shifted towards daylight music festival concerts crooned by international artists and beamed live  across continental channels like Dstv for more publicity , In morocco they got the Mawazine Festival, a festival less dependant on public funding but thrives on variables i.e Ticketing,advertising space that accounts for 68% of their budget while the private sector contributes 32% which begs the question  why can’t we have a Malindi Kitenge Festival , Mombasa cultural Festival or Lamu international Festival groomed by well reknown artists. In the UK according to the guardian newspaper, around 7.7 million people spent £1.4bn in Britain last year on everything from fairy wings and face paints to pints of beer and bacon butties, according to the first report into "music tourism" by UK Music, the body that represents the music industry. Music puts unknown places to the map so let us also have local musical groups given incentives to shoot on some of our hotspot tourist attractions because they too have huge followers on YouTube and other social media platforms. Jeniffer Lopez perfomance  during her last  Mawazine Music Festival concert early this year in Morocco .

Through Social media platforms such as   twitter or Facebook you’ll find so many potential tourists wishing to travel to the country yet there is virtually no one to guide them or rather advise them though we have our relevant ministry twitter handle on!  It is incumbent upon the relevant tourism ministry to have staff dedicated on going through social media posts on daily basis and offering customer service and advice to such potential clientele.Former spice girl Victoria Beckam expressing her wish to travel to kenya at 2.19 on the link below.

Arsenal trio of  chamberlain , Wilshere and coquelin  thoughts on visiting kenya.

Though government has introduced tax incentives for employers providing vacation allowances for its employees, focusing on MICE tourism and other initiatives the three above leads should be heavily considered.