When I was in Botswana in 2003, I visited a U.S. government-funded resort on the northeast perimeter of the Okavango Delta. It was a beautiful location with solar-heated showers, decent beds, affordable overnight rates, and a dozen or so mekoro operators who would take tourists out for a three-hour tour on the delta for the equivalent of USD $25. The challenge was what David pointed out: much better financed, European owned hotels on the Delta were capturing all of the tourists because they knew how to market themselves and had web sites complemented by search engine optimization. The African-owned hotel had a bare bones web site, created by a well-meaning British volunteer, that just couldn’t compete.

I think that there is a lot that can be done to engage African-owned small businesses with donor-supported marketing agencies that can build their consumer profiles and maintain high-quality sites at little cost by operating at economies of scale for networks of tourism-related businesses. These marketing agencies can also do the footwork of responding to inquiries, organizing reservations, and staying in touch with rural tour operators by phone and text message. This is being done with some success in Zambia right now. And we should look at ways to replicate the success elsewhere.

The main reason for the distortion in marketing efforts for Kenya is because the country has never owned the industry. Tourism in Kenya was introduced by European tour operators whose model and business continue to dominate the industry to date. These operators have many destinations around the world and the moment our headlines are unpalatable, they simply pull out the plug and place it somewhere else.

We must, as you say, diversify our attractions. To date, we still sell what the same tour operators opened up in the early days yet we have more places they do not even know of.

Because we do not “own” much of our own economic activities, we lack the patriotism that can push our industries to the next level. I have always said that Kenyans in the US, Europe and other countries should be the ones selling Kenya tea and coffee for example but unfortunately for us, most of them do not “think” the tea and coffee is that great! The same applies to tourism, the friendliness of the people, the positive stories e.t.c.

Our new outfit TaliiKwetu.travel is venturing into taking the comforts and trappings of tourism into the everyday lives of Kenyans. We hope to offer some tourism expertise and service to the ordinary folk while they learn, earn and play. We realize that trying to put them on the same holiday as the visitor is counterproductive and we will therefore meet them where they are culturally safe and in their most formal and easy selves. We still have much work to do with this project but we trust that as the years go by they will begin to sing a different song - one that promotes the country for what it really is - the greatest holiday destination in the whole world!

To say the least, those in leadership and who are holding the purse need to hear this oftenly. Their efforts are continuously going to waste as they do the same of the old thing that does not work.