1 research outputs found
Kenya tourism marketing plan (2015/2018)
This marketing plan project is a culmination of extensive strategies with the use of
experiential marketing to address issues confronting the Kenyan tourism industry in
order to have a sustainable tourism sector. Following the terrorist attack carried out
by Islamist militants’ belonging to al-Shabaab terrorist organization on Nairobi’s
Westgate shopping mall in September 2013, tourist forecast has gone down sharply
with an average of 20% fall in tourists’ arrivals which is likely to have an impact on
the tourism sector in Kenya. Even before the deadly attack on Westgate, the most
lethal attack by Islamist terrorists in 15 years in Kenya, the government through the
Kenya tourist board had announced that in 2013 tourist arrivals were down by 12%,
at 495,978, according to an October 2013 report by Bloomberg. Tourism revenues
were also down by 7.4%, over FY12/13 (July-June) to reach KES96.24bn, according
to a September 2013 report on the local Capital FM website.
Beyond 2013, much will depend on how quickly the Kenya tourist board can regain
control of the situation. The Kenyan government believes that the Westgate mall
attack was a 'one-off' incident, with a low probability of a similar event happening
again over the short term period. Germany, United States, United Kingdom,
Australia, Italy, France and Canada continue to be the key source market however;
the Kenya tourist board can make continued growth stronger from new emerging
markets in order to increase new arrivals into the country.
The marketing plan outlines the objectives to be implemented and provides the
implementation strategy, activity plans, monitoring and evaluation plans, financial
requirements projections and proposes a new structure of experiential marketing. A
number of regional forces are identified that will impact tourism into the country
including global, social and economic forces, emerging trends in visitor motivations
and behavior, emerging forces in experiential marketing.
A major component of the strategy identifies target markets for Kenya to
commensurate with the level of resources that will be available for marketing and
promotion, in keeping with the forces and trends identified and the nature of the
Kenya tourism environment. The agreed upon target market segments are:
generic/mass travel, experiential travel, creative travel, adventure seeking travel,
senior/extended/long stay travel, and business related travel. The strategy phases the
development of the target markets over the years of the marketing strategies in order
to yield the best opportunity for results.
A core activity in developing a marketing strategy is determining the nature of
experiences Kenya offers in tourism. The strategy’s experience development process
will continue to develop within the context of the products identified which will be
promoted regionally: culture/heritage, nature, community-based. Each county in the
country has a significant number of attractions and experiences and the challenge of
the country is to bring these together in a creative and innovative way in order to
encourage tourists to visit more than one county in Kenya