The way forward for Kenyan tourism
2017 was the International year of Sustainable Tourism for development. How can businesses make the Kenyan tourism vision come true? This workshop in the 2nd Conference on Sustainable Inclusive Business, Kenya brought together key players from the private sector to discuss the future of Tourism in Kenya, the challenges and mitigation plans. The main discussion was around getting back to the basics of sustainable tourism, and making these basics a standard for all.
Sustainability in tourism is for the long term and thus long term benefits are involved, companies need to realize this important fact. Sustainability should thus be the DNA of tour operators especially environmental conservation as the environment is the business. Among the challenges faced in the push for sustainability in tourism include; Sustainability is voluntary and is currently not an organizational must have value. Most companies therefore shy away from the short term costs of sustainability not knowing there is a long term return of these investments. There is also a lack of consciousness of sustainability among founders and key people in the Kenyan tourism arena; there is a current perception that sustainability is for specific people and companies; Convincing the locals and villagers that tourism is a good thing is quite hard because they have experienced the hard consequence of irresponsible tourism; The hospitality aspect of the tourism industry find it hard to work together due to fear of competition.
Action points towards sustainable tourism:
- Treating of waste water from hotels
- Awareness creation for customers (marketing communication) – to pick a responsible business
- Training and new techniques added in academia for hands on recruits
- Raising awareness in communities?
- Visual awareness and interpretation of concepts and businesses
- Adoption of new innovations e.g. recycling and solar energy
- Responsible use of natural resources, especially water
- Transparency in pricing system
- Development of a system to capture sustainability milestones
- Food waste management
- Plastic waste management, maintain serenity en-route tourist attractions
- Partnerships for implementation
