Kenya will be seeking to increase her tourism numbers from the Asian market as it showcases her tourism products during the ITB-Asia –Singapore expo which will be taking place between the 16thand 18th of October in Singapore, the Kenya Tourism Board(KTB) disclosed on Sunday.
The forum is an annually held trade event and convention for the travel industry designed to become the primary event for the Asia Pacific travel industry.
About twelve companies from the Kenya’s travel trade will be taking part in the expo by showcasing Kenya’s tourism offering and the Magical Kenya experience to the vast Asian pacific market which has not been fully taped into.
KTB chairman Jimi Kariuki said that Kenya had been receiving good tourism numbers from the Asian market but expressed hopes for higher numbers as marketing programs have been laid out to woo the Asian market.
“Our numbers from this market have shown good potential, in 2018, visitors from Asia to Kenya closed at 269,151 which translated to 13.3 per cent of the total visitors into our country from the Asian region,” said Kariuki.
“We project these numbers to rise by 2025, because an estimated 90 million households in Asia are expected to become part of the global travelling class. This clearly indicates that we must position ourselves better to ensure we reap bigger from these numbers” he added.
Kenya’s tourism sector is upbeat on the growth of visitor number in the first quarter (July-September) pointing to a positive outlook at the close of 2019.
Within the period, international arrivals closed at 604,690, compared to same period last year which posted 587,385 arrivals, translating to a growth of 2.9 percent.
Kariuki said that ITB –Asia tourism fair presents Kenya yet another opportunity to tap into Asia market that continues to show potential for growth.
“We are riding on our current positive image the country is enjoying globally to re-affirm our position as the preferred tourist destination as well as Kenya’s commitment to improvement of tourism business,” Kariuki added in a statement issued in Nairobi.
Data from UNWTO indicates that Asia Pacific has been the fastest growing region in the world with regards to international tourist arrivals over the past 10 years with most of this growth being attributed to China which has established itself as the leading global outbound source market.
According to the research undertaken by MasterCard on outbound travel from the Asia Pacific region, outbound travel is expected to grow by an annual rate of 6 percent over the forecast period of 2016-2021.
Emerging Asia Pacific countries currently record about 1.5 times more outbound trips than the Developed Asia Pacific destinations, these countries are expected to grow more than twice as fast as that of the developed Asia Pacific destinations.
JK/abj/APA