Nairobi hotels record higher profits ahead of Obama trip and summit

Villa Rosa Kempinski, one of the hotels seeing increased bookings ahead of Obama visit. [PHOTO: Beverlyne Musili/STANDARD]

Nairobi-based hotels are registering what is considered the best month in years as Kenya prepares to host the sixth edition of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) later this month.

Reports from industry players indicate city hotels received an avalanche of bookings for between one to two weeks as thousands of event organisers, delegates, security personnel and business leaders converge here. This is the biggest test yet to Nairobi’s capacity for conference tourism and it comes at a much needed time when Kenya’s tourism industry is struggling to climb out of a three year slump.

Several city hotels including Sankara, Crown Plaza, Kempinsky, Serena and Tribe among others continue to register brisk business in the run up to the summit that will be co-hosted by the United States and Kenya. US president Barack Obama is set to visit the country for the summit, which marks the first time ever a sitting US President is visiting Kenya.

“This summit is welcome for the country and the tourism industry. The timing is perfect for several reasons,” explains Kenya Association of Hotel Keepers and Caterers (KAHC) CEO Mike Macharia. “In the first place, the increased business comes as we are working to recover from the challenges that we have been experiencing particularly over the last two years,” said Macharia.

According to data released last week by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), the country’s tourism sector recorded the largest drop in performance over the first quarter of 2015 for the fifth quarter running.

KNBS states that the sector contracted by 7.5 per cent during the first quarter 2015 compared to 14.1 per cent in the same quarter 2014. Two weeks ago, the United Kingdom lifted travel advisories placed on the coast, a move that was greeted by celebration from the local industry.

Breathe new life

“The travel advisories killed a large section of the market,” explained Villa Rosa Kempinski General Manager Mr Manish Nambiar. “A typical tourist spends his/her time on a beech and bush combination which means they want to check out the Safaris and then the Coast so the advisories put on the coast really hurt the business.”

Mr Nambiar states that the effects of the advisories still continue to be felt as bookings for this year’s annual Wildebeest migration from the key western markets have greatly fallen. “Most of the bookings we have for the migration are locally generated and it is not that people have stopped traveling; it’s just that they have chosen not to come to Kenya. But with the advisories now lifted we hope to have much of the traffic come back,” he says.

The Global Entrepreneurship Summit is the latest feather in Kenya’s cap as the country moves to breathe new life into its business and conference tourism offerings and get a larger share of the multi-billion dollar sector currently dominated by Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa. As part of this strategy, Kenya is on course to build the biggest convention centre in Africa at the Bomas of Kenya. The centre will have a 10,000 square metre exhibition hall and a convention hall with a capacity to hold 15,000 delegates.

Currently, the Bomas of Kenya has a capacity of 2,500 delegates and this is going to be the first and largest face-lift at the facility since it was started by the Government in 1971. The multi-billion project will be financed through public private partnerships and the Government is currently looking at the capital markets and partnerships with private developers.