Rituparna Chatterjee – Mumbai
With a view to further strengthen Kenya’s position as a high-end luxury destination, the Kenya Tourism Board (KTB) is aggressively marketing newer adventure products and is targeting to attract the Indian film fraternity. Kenya, which is popular for its safaris, has been witnessing an increasing demand for newer and niche adventure products from the discerning Indian travellers. “Indian travellers are exploring other adventure activities in Kenya along with wildlife safari. Also people are looking for customised itineraries which offer them activities like hot air balloon safari in Maasai Mara, walking safari with a Maasai warrior, adventure sports at Sagana camp or Hells Gate National Park,” stated.
Chiranjib Biswas, destination manager, KTB adding that, their focus is also to sell the coastal side of the country which is now gaining popularity among adventure enthusiasts. Speaking about their plans for Indian film fraternity, he opined, “We are in touch with production houses and are very keen on promoting Kenya through Bollywood. Our new campaigns and promotional plans will focus on quality tailored offerings that appeal to the Indian audience. We are doing a pan India consumer campaign in eight cities to create more visibility and augment product know how. Our market penetration will be across metros, Tier I and Tier II cities.”
As for their level of engagement with the Indian travel trade, Biswas opined, “KTB has always worked closely with the travel trade and regularly work for product enhancement. We recently conducted three city roadshow in Tier II cities like Jaipur, Chandigarh and Lucknow. The online training programme was a huge success. We have registered lot of agents who are willing to promote the destination from all over India.” Speaking on India’s position as a source market for Kenya, Biswas stated, “Initially, the western region was the first primary source market for Kenya as it had direct air connectivity, then north India joined the fray with direct connectivity of Kenya Airways. But now slowly and steadily travellers from other cities like Bengaluru, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad have started going to Kenya in big way.” In 2012 over 61,275 Indian tourists travelled to Kenya. India is the fourth largest source market with 6.9 per cent market share till June 2013. Since 2009, India has registered a growth of 68 per cent in the number of tourist’s receipts.
