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The Kenyan government Tuesday unveiled a special tool to gauge exact contribution of tourism to the country’s wealth with the new institution expected to determine the value tourists add to tourism related sectors, their spending patterns and jobs created as a result.
The Tourism Satellite Account (TSA), unveiled by Tourism and Wildlife Cabinet Secretary Najib Balala will also offer an estimate demand and supply of tourism for market intelligence and publicity.
“Since the accounts distinguish the numbers and expenditure of different tourist markets by origin, the yield contribution measures can be developed per tourist and by source market,” said Tourism Research Institute (TRI) acting Chief executive David Gitonga, who said through the tool, the State will be able to measure the multiplier effect of tourism expenditure on the whole economy by providing information on who is supplying these goods and how the demand is being met.
Tourist Arrivals in Kenya increased to 136225 in December from 125323 in November of 2018. Tourist Arrivals in Kenya averaged 87693.24 from 2006 until 2018, reaching an all-time high of 171422 in July of 2018 and a record low of 36970 in February of 2008.
The number of international tourists is expected to grow by 10 per cent from last year’s, despite a slight drop in the first half. The projection is hinges on a strong performance by the US market which grew by 9.4 per cent in the first half of the year to close at 110,668 compared to 101,167 same period last year.
Tourism CS expects this year’s arrivals to hit 2.2 million up from 2,025,206 reported in 2018, the highest ever number of arrivals in the country’s tourism history.
Tourism Research Institute (TRI) said in a different forum that it will embark on focusing to grow tourist arrival numbers from 1.3 million to 2.5 million with revenues rising from the current Sh99 billion to Sh175 billion in the next five years.
TRI’s Gitonga said the findings will be uploaded on a public portal where hospitality investors as well as tourism product developers will find ready data on available opportunities across Kenya.