Tourism in Kenya.

Visitors to parks and game reserves declined by 8.3 percent in 1997 and 20.9 percent in 1998 while visitors to museums, snake park and other historical sites also registered decline from 758.8 thousand in 1996 to 588.1 thousand in 1997. Hotel bed-nights occupied as well as available hotel capacity recorded declines of 42.7 percent and 16.2 percent respectively in 1998 as compared to 1997.        

                

        

Advantages And Disadvantages of Tourism:

                The Advantages:

1. Tourism provides direct employment in hotels, bars and other tourist venues. Indirect employment is the people employed, for example, a builder to build a hotel or a farmer to harvest food for the hotel.
2. To make the country more attractive to holiday seekers many improvements have been made. These include new and better roads, railways and telephone system
3. Tourism is Kenya’s highest export earner, which helps many people live a higher standard of life.
4. Public services have also greatly improved, especially hospitals and things, which we think of as necessities but Kenyans think of as luxuries, such as electricity and running water.
5.   Wildlife is protected, not only from tourists but from the Kenyans too. This has completely wiped out most forms of poaching and those caught face many years in jail, especially if the animal is endangered.
6. Halts migration as people will not won’t to move when there are plenty of jobs around.

        

The Disadvantages:

1. It damages local environments and traditions changed so visitors can do them
2.  As mentioned previously, tourism is not a stable industry.
3. Many people are employed because of the tourist industry but Kenyans normally get the low paid labour jobs like a cleaner. This has lead to social unrest in some parts of Kenya.
4. Local people can get offended at tourists behaviour.
5. Over 80% of the major holiday resorts are owned by foreigners, which means the profits leave the country and do not help Kenya in its fight against poverty.
6. Some people may loose their livelihood in tourist areas.

Sustainable Tourism:

To make tourism worth it and more successful for Kenya without harming the country in the long-term, the tourism must be sustainable. A good way of doing this is to use Ecotourism. Ecotourism encourages people to come to Kenya to appreciate the natural environment without damaging it. Local people also get to make important decisions for themselves. Kenya must not get stuck in the trap of the tourist cycle (see below). However tourism is now spreading through the whole of Kenya and there are many concerns about the less protected areas.

The tourism needs management everywhere to enforce the regulations and keep things working the way they should be. However effective management doesn’t normally come into effect until serious damage has been done. However there is an exception – Antarctica. However it could be a while until Kenya has effective management in control.  At the moment the Masai controls the laws and regulations but if the tour guides offer them a bribe, the Masai workers are likely to turn a blind eye and let the tour guide drive off road to et closer to the animals. A management scheme would prevent this from happening.