Kenya's bleeding tourism industry

KEEKOROK, Kenya — Nancy Holan just had the safari of her life. She and a friend flew to Kenya from Detroit and as they cruised the wide open plains, they had the lions, zebras and elephants all to themselves.

“It was wonderful,” she said.

Not far away, Isaac Rotich, a high-end safari guide, paced an empty game lodge in freshly polished safari boots. He can spot a six-inch lizard 50 feet away, and tell you the name — in Kiswahili, English and Latin — of the plant it is sitting on. He has spent years building this career and was making $30,000 a year, a king’s ransom in these parts.

Now he is afraid of losing it all.

“We’re hurting, big time,” Mr. Rotich said.

This is what Kenya’s legendary safari business has become: wonderful for tourists, disastrous for just about everyone else.

Tourism is one of Kenya’s biggest industries, but the violence that exploded after a flawed election in December has eviscerated the business, with bookings down 80 to 90 percent in most areas. Even after a peace deal was signed Thursday, government and tourism officials worried that it could take months — if not years — to recover.

Kenya’s rival politicians have agreed to share power, and on Friday many people here praised them for finally calming the country down. But the long-term economic consequences are just beginning to sink in. “We will work very hard to see what we can salvage,” said Rose Musonye Kwena, an official at the Kenya Tourist Board, who estimated that even if there was no more major violence this year business would still be down 50 percent.

The images of machete-wielding mobs caused a tourist stampede, and the lingering uncertainty over the country’s direction has caused a wave of cancellations, leaving dozens of hotels closed and thousands of guides, drivers, cooks, waiters, masseuses, wood carvers and bead stringers out of work. Many of them support a vast network of relatives. A continued tourism meltdown could push millions of Kenyans toward poverty, which was one of the underlying causes of the violence in the first place.

Government officials are worried about out-of-work guides and trackers poaching game. Village elders in animal-rich areas who had been persuaded that conservation and tourism would be profitable have been re-examining this equation and considering selling off their land.

Sales mean farms, and farms mean fences, which could block the millions of zebra, wildebeest and antelope that migrate across the famous Masai Mara game reserve each year, possibly endangering one of the most spectacular gatherings of animal life on the planet. “It’s absolutely catastrophic,” said Calvin Cottar, the owner of an upscale safari camp.

Tourism could take among the longest to bounce back, because it is especially sensitive to perceptions, and the well-publicized bloodshed of the past two months has badly dented Kenya’s image. Last year, the country had more than two million tourists. In January, there were only 55,000 new arrivals, well below projections. The truth is that most of the violence has subsided and it never really touched the tourist areas, like the Masai Mara.