Tourists from UK are expected in Masai Mara this week as the the Northern Hemisphere summer holiday kicks off.
Hoteliers say the holidays, which will end in September, will see more tourists visit the Mara during the current peak season, the Coast and southern Africa compared to the last several years.
“Going by the August-September bookings, a big number of UK tourists will visit. It will be the first time since 2009 that they will be arriving in big numbers,” says Lily Waddington of UK Magical Travel Limited.
The travel company will be busy bringing in tourists, mainly from Britain, to the world famous reserve, Botswana and South Africa, until mid September. The tour operator-cum-hotelier told TravelWise the tourists choice of Kenya was informed by the prevailing peace.
Terror attacks, an Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014 and the political tension that preceded elections have frustrated arrivals in the past.
“Since the 2017 elections, Kenya has been peaceful, which is now starting to pay dividends,” said Waddington, also the proprietor of Osero Camp in the Mara.
Beginning 2013, arrivals from China have continued to dwarf those from Europe and America, which, since independence, have been Kenya’s traditional source markets. Several Chinese lodges and camps have been built in the Mara in the last 10 years.
The British fly in after about two million wildebeests and zebras have already crossed Sand River into the Mara from the Serengeti savannah in Tanzania.
Most hotels in the reserve are recording bed occupancy of between 75 per cent to 90 per cent, up from about 45 per cent to 50 per cent in June.
The summer arrivals is expected to push occupancy rates to 100 per cent in August as managers and other senior hotels staff prepare to spend nights outside their residences to expand accommodation.
Guesthouses in trading centres outside Sekenani, Talek, Ololaimutia and Musiara gates are expected to be overstretched as tour drivers and guides will be lodging outside the camps and lodges where their clients will be residing. “All tour vans will be out of town in the Mara until early September.
Accommodation inside the park, in drivers quarters, will be a problem,” says John Miwani, a tour guide- cum-driver with Origins Safaris.
Most visitors are expected to use the Nairobi Mai Mahiu-Narok road after the upgrading of the 60km Narok-Sekenani gate section from muram to bitumen standards.
“Tour vans are now competing with airlines, which have for many years dominated arrivals because of poor roads,” says Parkire Kuyioni, Narok county’s Senior Warden in the national reserve.
