Underselling Kenya

My friend Daniel, an Australian, marked the life-changing event of his second marriage by a honeymoon to Mauritius. I was surprised at the time by the choice: Mauritius is not close to Australia, and I thought the island to be generally underwhelming.

I had briefly worked in Mauritius as a graduate student, spending three months on the island. I had a wonderful time there, but pretty much concluded that I would not be back. There are many exciting places in the world to visit, and not enough time to experience all of them. Only great places will get return visits and, by my reckoning, Mauritius was not one of them. Beaches? They are almost common in our easily accessible world, and many are better than what you generally find on Mauritius. Cuisine? I was excited to feast on a blend of Creole, Indian and Chinese, but found that they generally served a watered down version of each. Women? My expectations were identical to what I wanted from the cuisine. I will not comment on the experience.

Succeeding where it counts
However, unexciting as Mauritius is, in my opinion, as a tourist destination, it is nonetheless a hugely successful destination. According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), Mauritius received 870,000 visitors to Kenya’s 1.3 million in 2009. This is about 60% of Kenya’s number but when Mauritius is less than 1% the size of Kenya.

Visitor numbers tell only part of the story. What they spend per visit – the equivalent of a product’s price, and so its market value – is hugely significant. Drawing again from UNWTO 2009 data, Mauritius earned approximately $1,282 per visitor compared to Kenya’s per visitor earnings of $496. This means that not only do large numbers of tourists want to visit Mauritius, but they are also willing to pay top dollar for the experience.

This begs the question: with a superior product in terms of raw attributes, why is Kenya so badly underperforming in comparison to Mauritius?

A great product, thrown away
People in the industry will tell you that security issues are a key explanatory factor. After each international headline-grabbing violent event in Kenya – the 1997 Likoni riots, the 2002 hotel bomb in Mombasa, the 2008 post-election violence – large travel agents made the resumption of charter flights to Kenya’s coast conditional on substantial price reductions. As a result, hoteliers’ margins were pushed down, forcing them to focus on volume instead. So they were pushed into a mass tourism model.

The movement towards mass tourism brings problems upcountry. Visitors to the Maasai Mara regularly complain about the density of vehicles around the big five, usually forming a disappointing backdrop to visitors’ wildlife photographs. Things have gotten so bad that other destinations in Kenya, such as private sanctuaries, actually focus on the fact that they are ‘not the Mara’ as a major marketing draw. This would be equivalent to Egypt going to market with a campaign that encourages travelers to visit the country but avoid the great pyramids of Giza.

Some selective visitors do in fact avoid the Mara. To their way of thinking, its splendor has been overrun, and so second best alternatives in terms of the raw product on offer end up presenting superior holiday experiences.

A downward spiral
So Kenya is finding itself in a vicious cycle of a degrading tourism product which is sold at a discount, requiring the industry to focus on increasing numbers, which further degrades the product and forces further discounts.

Turning this trend around is on the government’s mind. It states that it wants to focus on a higher-end tourism market segment. However, if Kenya’s tourism sector is to extract a price premium, it will need to invest in improving its product. Much of what needs to be done will fall on the shoulders of the government, as markets alone have led to the currently unsustainable model.

Bold action required
So where to start? Beaches need to be policed for crime, and the minor but annoying pestering of tourists by beach touts controlled. Shacks that crowd many beaches on Mombasa’s North Coast, and increasingly the South Coast, will need to be relocated to a limited number of well designed markets or bazaars. Urban sprawl that presses close onto tourism areas will have to be managed through thoughtful zoning. Some architectural guidelines would also be useful.

Strengthening the wildlife-related product will be more challenging. Limiting the number of visitors to certain high-demand parks, through limited entry permits, will work, as it does in Rwanda with regard to gorilla trekking. With fewer visitors, but each enjoying a less crowded experience, the parks and lodges within high-demand parks will be able to charge higher entry fees and accommodation rates. In short, a price premium for a high quality experience.

This may mean that there is space for fewer lodges in such parks, and existing ones may even need to be phased out. This will not be good for the owners of lagging businesses, but better for the industry as a whole as the parks are left less degraded and the price charged for the experience rises.

Dispersing benefits
Limited permit numbers for certain parks also encourages visitors to travel to other ones where access is easier and cheaper, taking pressure off places like the Mara and opening up new investment opportunities in other destinations. This means not just new investment but also more widely dispersed investment, and with it more widely spread economic and employment advantages for different communities.

Being worthy
Kenya holds the promise of being one of the most prized travel destinations in the world. It has a fundamentally wonderful tourism product, but one that it is both under-selling and eroding. The government wants to change this, but doing so will require bold action that leads to a revival of the basic product.

Wanting something is one thing; deserving it is another. Let the policy chiefs prove themselves worthy.