The Board in collaboration with Uganda’s Africa Market Destination Representative (Pollant LLT) will organize a series of B2B roadshows in key source markets across Africa for increased competitiveness, and to bring them to speed with the rollout of the POA brand. Incentives will be provided to Ugandan travel trade to encourage their participation beginning with the Kenya roadshow in Nairobi from 23 – 25 May 2022.
The Kenya roadshow initiative is part of the tourism associations’ strategic role within the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to promote outbound travel and tourism operations within the East African Community (EAC) member states with an intent to develop a model of cross-border tourism.
The planned roadshow will be very important for both the travel trade from Uganda and Kenya. Proper sensitization on products and experiences available in destination Uganda to the Kenyan travel trade partners will be important to enable a seamless flow of tourists from Kenya to Uganda.
The travel trade portfolio in Kenya consist of the following Associations:
- Kenya Association of Tour Operators (KATO) – 300 members
- Tour Operators Society of Kenya (TOSK) – 100 members – mainly MSME and SMEs
- Kenya Association of Travel Agents (KATA) – 250 members
The above associations are all recognized by the Tourism Regulator and their members fully comply with the tourism regulations in Kenya. Their membership specializes in various categories of inbound and outbound Travel Trade segments ranging from Wildlife Safari, Adventure, Cultural, Religious, Agro tourism among others.
The Roadshow in Nairobi between Uganda and Kenya travel trade partners will come in handy to foster mutual tourism trade cooperation between the 2 countries.
The vast majority of international arrivals (80%) comes from Africa and about three-quarters of Uganda’s tourists are from other African countries.
Kenya, which borders Uganda, is the biggest source market of tourists to Uganda, making up almost half of all arrivals into the country. The number of visitors from Tanzania, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Sudan is still quite low. Tourism data from 2017 to 2019, before the height of Covid 19 pandemic, shows that the top 5 source markets were Rwanda (32% of arrivals), Kenya (24%), Tanzania (6%), the USA (4%) and India (3%).
Kenya’s travel trade sector is fully developed with 3 major tourism associations with a membership of seven hundred (700) who are mainly tour operators and travel agents. This segment of travel trade partners in Kenya, have fully embraced technology in their marketing and operations.
The organization of the roadshow in Kenya will be support the Africa MDR Pollant which has strong ties with Kenyan Media.
The objectives of the roadshow include among others;
- To increase the number of tour operators selling Uganda in the source market from the current baseline by 30%
- To increase tourist arrivals from Kenya their length of stay in the country and overall spend
- To build relationships with Key Kenya travel trade to partner on sales initiatives and include Uganda on their itineraries
- To raise awareness of the destination with more emphasis on brand ‘Explore Uganda’ among target markets and through the media networking and publicity platforms
- To raise awareness of the destination with more emphasis on brand ‘Explore Uganda’ among target markets and through the media networking and publicity platforms.