China now woos Kenyan tourists to one of its cities

Kenya Tourism Board's (KTB) Helen Omukoko (left) and Elizabeth Okaka Marketing officer KTB greets Wu Wei Jun General Manager China Southern Airlines (CSA) during 2018 CSA Guangzhou Tourism Kenya Promotion conference in Nairobi on May 29, 2018. [Jonah Onyango, Standard]

More than 120,000 Kenyan passengers have flown to Guangzhou since 2015 when direct flights between Nairobi and the Chinese city were established.

This number might rise should Guangzhou’s plan to woo Kenyan tourists to the port city materialise. Currently, most Kenyans flock to this Chinese city to buy goods for sale.

Wu Wei Jun, the general manager of Nairobi office of China Southern Airlines, which is at the heart of the new drive to market the commercial city as a tourist destination, Kenyans can visit Guangzhou for leisure as well.

This initiative started last year following the signing of the Strategic Co-operation Agreement between China Southern Airlines and the Guangzhou Tourism Administration last year.

As a result, he explained, the city has started focusing on the standards and quality of hospitality and tourism facilities improvement.

Free accommodation

“We are proud of building a flyover between Africa and China, and of making Guangzhou a city not only attractive for Tourism, but also for trade exhibition and fair. And China Southern is more than a flyover builder,” said Jun.

He said that through its partnership with Kenya Airways, the passengers from most of the African countries have been connected first to Kenya then to Guangzhou of China.

“If Guangzhou is not your destination, you can also be transferred seamlessly to China’s other domestic cities, and the other international destinations like Japan, Korea, Australasia and countries in Southeast Asia.”

The airline is also dangling free accommodation in Guangzhou to passengers travelling on China Southern Airlines and International Code Share flights if the connecting time is more than 8 hours but not more than 48 hours.