AFRICA: Fleeing Airline Staff Avoid Irate Passengers After Flight Cancellations, Still More Africans Travel

Africans are increasingly driving the growing demand for tourism in their home continent, contrary to perceptions, a new UN report suggests.

International visitor numbers to Africa more than doubled from 1995-2014.

While an average of four out of 10 of them were from other African countries, the figure rose to two out of three in sub-Saharan Africa.

Analysts say liberalising air transport and further relaxing visa rules could boost tourism further.
It currently accounts for nearly 9% of the continent's economy.

The latest figures are in a report by the UN conference on trade and development (Unctad), entitled Economic Development in Africa Report 2017: Tourism for Transformative and Inclusive Growth.

International visitor numbers averaged a rise of 6% a year, going from 24 million in 1995-98, to 56 million between 2011 and 2014.

The sector supports more than 21 million jobs - or 1 in 14 jobs - on the continent. International tourists arrivals and tourism revenues grew at 6% and 9% over 20 years.

Over the next decade continued growth is projected to add an extra 11 million jobs in Africa.The report adds that to realise the potential of tourism within Africa for the continent's economic growth, governments should take steps to liberalise air transport, promote the free movement of persons, ensure currency convertibility and, crucially, recognise the value of African tourism and plan for it.

The African Union last year launched an African passport to ease travel, however, this is only available to a few officials at the moment.

Although Ghana last year announced that it would drop visa requirements for other African nationals, in some countries it can be easier for citizens of Western countries to get visas, than fellow Africans.

It can also be very hard, and expensive, to fly between different African countries.

The UN report said speeding up the visa process can have relatively fast and tangible impacts.

In Rwanda, the abolition of visa requirements for fellow members of the East African Community in 2011 helped increase intraregional tourists from 283,000 in 2010, to 478,000 in 2013," the report said.

Flying between the West African capitals of Freetown and Banjul should take about an hour. But because of the region's poor air connections, it can be quicker and easier to fly via Morocco or Belgium, although that could take a day, or even three.

To Travel to Gambia from Sierra Leone, this journey of 700km (400 miles) should take about an hour and The Gambia is a popular tourist destination, which is served by charter flights from across Europe.

But there are just two flights a week from Freetown..

One option would have been to fly with Royal Air Maroc via Casablanca, where there can be a stopover of 30 hours with no automatic entitlement to hotel accommodation.

So it is actually quicker, but far more expensive, to fly to Belgium's capital Brussels and then connect to Banjul.
That "only" takes 24 hours.

Another option would have been with Air Cote D'Ivoire, a relatively new kid on the aviation block.
This would mean flying via its hub in Abidjan, then to Dakar and onward to Banjul.

However, one needs to stay overnight in Abidjan, and possibly another night in Dakar to be able catch Brussels Airlines which is virtually the only reliable means of flying to Banjul from the Senegalese capital.

So the journey time would take three days.In the end, the best option is to drive from Freetown to Conakry, before flying to Dakar, Senegal's capital, where you need to spend a night to get my connecting flight to Banjul the following day.

You may spend two days travelling for a trip that should take slightly over an hour.

To return you may have to fly from Banjul to Dakar, spend the night and fly next evening to Conakry.

You will meet more travellers most of them business people who complain about flights, saying it makes travel more expensive.

You will have to change your ticket to fly from Banjul via Brussels to Nairobi because your airline may cancel flights to Dakar, from where you may be scheduled to connect to Nairobi.

You may have to wait two days which will cost you time and money to wait another two days at least to fly to Nairobi via Dakar.

Several African countries established national airlines after independence, mainly focusing on flights to destinations outside the continent.

Many of these carriers were propped up financially and protected by regulation, stifling competition and leaving domestic and regional routes undeveloped for a long time.

Safety has also been an issue because of comparatively high accident rates, and regulators outside Africa have imposed heavy restrictions.

Even some African airlines with good safety records are blocked from flying to the European Union (EU) airports because of a lack of confidence in African safety regulators.

Another factor is that some African countries have still not opened up their skies to each other,allowed other countries' carries to use their airports, yet they have opened up to carriers from other continents. Nigeria a typical example.

As a result, it is often cheaper to fly from an African city via London, Amsterdam, or Dubai and back to a neighbouring African city than to travel direct.

Non-African airlines currently fly about 80% of intercontinental traffic to and from Africa.

The Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM), a policy of the African Union, is due to be introduced this year.
Implementing the SAATM, which is similar to the EU's single aviation market, would go a long way towards making African air travel more competitive by reducing protectionist policies.

Half a century after independence, many African countries still have better transport links with their former colonial powers than their neighbours!

There are several flights a day from former British colony The Gambia to London, but very few to neighbouring Senegal.
Senegal's capital, Dakar, is of course well served with flights to its former colonial master, France.

One reason for the lack of flights between major West African cities is the collapse of regional airlines such as Ghana Airways, Air Senegal and several in Nigeria.

Some West African states have tried to address this by setting up a new airline, ASKY, based in the Togolese capital, Lome where a massive airport expansion is underway.

It was established in 2008 but does not yet connect all West African countries.

One expert in the aviation industry says the passenger flow in West Africa is very low, so it does not make business sense to fly some routes.

With sensible and business-friendly tax regime the situation would improve.
The Vice-President of KLM Africa, Frank Legre, told journalists in Freetown recently that the cost of a plan ticket to London largely consisted of taxes.

A ticket London will cost $825 yet KLM actual price without tax is $350, which shows that over $500 tax has been levied on the ticket.

While it is true that many West Africans cannot afford to fly, the middle-class is increasing and if prices were lower, more people would develop the habit of flying and so it might become profitable for airlines to link West African cities before too long.

In the meantime, the idea of free movement of goods and services as envisioned by the founding heads of state of the regional body Ecowas remains a dream.

The Nigerian government announced a takeover of the country's biggest airline,Arik Air to prevent it closing. But this is just the latest example of problems in Nigeria's aviation industry.

The government agency (Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria) now responsible for supervising the airline said the decision was made to instill sanity in the country's aviation sector and to prevent a major catastrophe.

Customer service at Arik Air is at times non-existent. When the airline cancels a flight, most of the time its ground staff flee rather than deal with the fallout from irate passengers.

As the company's troubles mounted at the end of last year, 70% of its international flights were delayed.
The firm's staff bear the brunt for an airline that even by Nigerian standards is a byword for utter dysfunction. Last month the company was forced to issue a plea for passengers not to attack its employees.

The government agency that pushed the airline into receivership reeled off an astonishing rap sheet of Arik's alleged offences - enormous debt, bad governance, and erratic operational challenges.

As Nigeria's biggest airline, the government decided that it could not allow the company to collapse.

But to fly Arik often means never getting off the ground.

A passenger was at Enugu airport when he was told his flight was cancelled. The man beside him at the check-in desk just shook his head, all his flights had been cancelled for the past two days.

To survive Nigerian air travel means coming up with new strategies. First, find the most reliable airline and stick with it. And, if possible, take the first flight in the morning as it's normally guaranteed to go on time,give or take an hour.

Delays become compounded throughout the day as most airlines operate a shuttle service. So a good bet is that a mid-afternoon flight will probably turn into early evening flight. Passengers normally only miss their flight if it actually leaves on time.
Nobody wants to spend too much time at the airports here. Port Harcourt was named the world's worst in 2015.

You may always feel safe on flights apart from after a rocky landing when several of the overhead luggage bins burst open.

To be fair to the airlines, Nigeria is not the easiest place to operate. International carriers face huge issues repatriating their profits as they can't get their hands on dollars because of Nigeria's current economic crisis.
The dollar shortage has also led to aviation fuel shortages causing massive disruption in the past few months.

The worst inconvenience faced travellers to Nigeria when Abuja's airport was closed for six weeks while major repairs were carried out on its runway. At least one airline damaged its landing gear on the pot-holed tarmac.

With the capital's only airport shut down, the government rerouted flights to an airport in the nearby city of Kaduna.
The small airport had capacity to handle only 300 passengers a day compared to the 5,000 who pass through Abuja's terminal. You can imagine how chaotic it was

Travelling to the capital from Kaduna involved a two-hour journey along a road that was hit by a spate of kidnappings. The government is promised to put on extra security.

Several international airlines declined to fly into Kaduna, although direct flights to Lagos, Kano or Port Harcourt will continued.

There are, however, a few perks about air travel in Nigeria: Free snacks onboard; unbelievably cheap excess baggage and the fact that you can board with as much carry-on luggage as you can actually carry on.

Also, during a year's travel in Nigeria, bags have always arrived on time.Delayed passengers may give you great company while waiting at the airport.

Attacks by the Islamic State group have led to a dramatic fall in tourism in parts of North Africa, where millions rely on the trade to make a living.

New figures from the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) show that visits to North Africa fell by 8% in 2015, bucking a global upward trend.

International tourism grew by 4.4% overall, to reach a total of 1.18bn arrivals, according to the UNWTO.
But countries such as Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco have been hit hard.

Beach resorts such as Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt, where a passenger jet was loaded with a bomb in November, and Sousse in Tunisia, where gunmen opened fire at holidaymakers in June, have seen visitor numbers sharply decline.

Some 3,500 British tourists left Tunisia in the days after the Sousse attack, in which 38 people 30 of them British were shot by Islamist gunman at the Port El Kantaoui resort.

Tunisia was still reeling from an attack in March, when gunmen killed 22 people at the Bardo museum in Tunis, mostly European tourists. And the country was still attempting to reinvigorate tourism following the Arab Spring.

Egypt was also trying to rehabilitate its image after the 2011 uprising there, and had been promoting the Sharm el-Sheikh resort as a safe and luxurious destination. But the plane crash, which killed 148 people and was attributed to IS, led a number of foreign countries to ground all flights to and from the resort.

Morocco has not suffered directly from terrorism, but the Foreign Office does warn potential travellers that they face a high threat from terrorism in the country.

Limited data available for Africa as a whole suggested that tourism was down by 3% to 53m - 8% in North Africa and 1% in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Strong continued growth in other parts of the world meant that global tourism rose, although no individual region saw gains as high as North Africa's decline.

Europe, the Americas, and Asia and the Pacific all recorded about 5% growth. Arrivals reached 609 million in Europe, 29 million more than in 2014. Arrivals in the Americas grew 9 million to 191 million and Asia and the Pacific recorded 277 million, 13 million more than last year.

Arrivals to the Middle East increased by 3% to a total of 54 million.

China is among the largest sources of tourists, according to the UNWTO, benefitting Asian destinations such as Japan and Thailand, as well as the United States and various European countries.

The number of tourists from Russian and Brazil declined significantly, reflecting the economic constraints in both countries.
Citing a larger degree of uncertainty and volatility, the UNWTO has predicted between 3.5% and 4.5% of growth in global tourism in 2016.


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TUNISIA: Tourists Sneak Back To Tunisia

Tourists are slowly returning to Tunisia ending a period of decline that followed the 2015 attacks, said the director of the Tunisian tourism office Abdellatif Hmam.

The Director said owners of the Sousse hotel which was attacked in 2015 are in the process of renovation and must complete within 15 days.

“2016 has been a calm year, without any terrorist incident, without any particular security problem. Therefore it was a year for Tunisia, overall, it was a year for the country to control its security,” he said.

He noted that the country has taken a step of 5.7 million tourists adding that in the figure, Russian market who behaved in an extraordinary way.

“The French market is in any way imperative for us. Because even as professionals, when there are no French there, we feel uncomfortable. Even if there may be all other nationalities,” Hmam explained.

He said the objective of the government in 2017 is to have 500,000 visitors adding that they are optimistic and ready to resume the tourism business.

“We have always maintained our position that we must be present (on the British market) because when we are absent, the whole destination could be completely wiped off the map. Therefore we continue to invest here and must be patient,” he added.

Unemployment is almost 30 percent in the north African country as the country suffers from the impact of the deadly militant attacks on tourists.

A least 70 hotels have been closed since September 2015 in Tunisia after the two deadly attacks on foreign tourists.

According to a recent report, only 400,000 tourists visited the country last year while a total of 1.5 million visited before the revolution of 2011 and the Jihadist attack of 2015 where 59 tourists were killed at the Bardo museum.

Despite Threats, World Tourism Numbers Hit Record 1.18 Billion In 2015

The number of international tourists rose 4.4 percent worldwide in 2015 to hit a record 1.18 billion despite concerns over terrorism, the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) said Monday.

Tourism arrivals were up 5 percent in Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Americas, but fell 8 percent in North Africa where nations like Tunisia were hit by terrorist attacks, it said in a statement. It is the sixth consecutive year of above average growth in global tourism since the 2009 economic crisis, the Madrid-based body said. The UNWTO had predicted international tourism arrivals would increase by 3-4 percent in 2015, after expanding 4.7 percent the previous year. Global tourism figures were hard hit by the global financial crisis, declining 4 percent in 2009 – as an outbreak of swine flu also contributed to cash-strapped people staying at home – but have risen in each year since.

A rise of 3.1 percent was also reported for the Middle East, in which the number of tourists has been rising since 2014.

Tunisia's tourism industry was badly shaken in March by an attack on the Bardo Museum in Tunis, followed by one in June in the resort of Sousse were 59 tourists were gunned down in cold blood. These attacks and others in the region came as North African and Middle Eastern countries struggle to regain the trust of vacationers scared off by the Arab Spring uprisings that swept the region in 2011. "We are facing now a global threat," UNWTO Director Taleb Rifai told a press conference before appealing for governments to do all they can to boost security.

"We can see that many factors like changes in oil prices and crises in different parts of the world have affected the tourist numbers of 2015. As tourism's development is largely connected with security, we should not let fear and panic rule over us. We should continue travelling. Security is only the issue of Egypt, France, Thailand, Indonesia or Turkey, which have faced terrorist attacks in the recent period. This is an issue for all countries and it should be handled globally," Rifai said.

UNWTO predicts international tourism arrivals will increase 4 percent during this year.

TURKEY: After Armed Attacks,Tourists Egypt And Turkey

Tourists shun resorts from Egypt to Turkey in wake of Isis attacks .

Off the windswept headland where the Red Sea’s Gulf of Aqaba meets the Gulf of Suez, a dozen divers trail bubbles during their descent towards the famous Shark Reef, one of the world’s most popular diving sites.

A year ago Ras Mohammed national park would have been crowded with boats above and hundreds of divers below the water, but today’s visitors have the blue depths almost to themselves. After the bombing of a Russian tourist jet shortly after takeoff from nearby Sharm el-Sheikh last year, most flights to the area were cancelled and tourists have mostly stayed away.

Thousands of miles away along the Mediterranean coast, Tunisian security guard Karim Sahloul surveys another idyllic beach at the resort of Sousse, which was emptied by a terrorist attack. After a lone gunman opened fire at a hotel, killing 38 mostly British holidaymakers, few have dared to come back.

“Sousse is not like before; now it is very quiet, very dark,” says Sahloul, who was hailed as a beach-front hero last summer after risking bullets to administer life-saving first aid to Briton Allison Heathcote. “A lot of people are now without work, restaurants and shopping centres are closed, everyone is feeling it.”

His bravery, and that of other tourism workers who raced to protect visitors, earned plaudits, but it was not enough to restore the confidence of visitors or their governments, which have slapped travel warnings on countries across the Middle East and north Africa.

A string of high-profile attacks, fears of more violence and official travel advisories have led to a catastrophic collapse in visitor numbers in a swath of countries across the Middle East and north Africa which had turned sun-and-sand holidays into a critical pillar of their economies.

Mile after mile of empty hotels along the Sousse beachfront bear mute testimony to the shattering impact of the June attack and a March assault on tourists in the Bardo museum in Tunis, in which 21 were killed. Sahloul counts himself lucky to still have a job: “The whole city depends on the tourists. Really life is hard; there are lots of people without work.”
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Tunisia’s tourism minister, Salma Lummi, warned that the sector, which employs an estimated 400,000 people, had reached a “crisis point” and that its collapse risked fuelling a vicious circle of extremism. “Hotels have to close and this is an important industry. One of the sources of terrorism is lack of hope. It is not the only motor of it, but it is one of the very important origins,” she said.

In Egypt, the decline in tourism has been slower but just as devastating. Annual visitor numbers peaked at 14 million in 2010, but then the country’s revolution began in January 2011, sparking political instability that ate into tourist confidence. The numbers have never topped 10 million since and are expected to fall slightly to around nine million for the 2015 fiscal year, with the plane bombing and attacks on tourists adding to concerns about general violence.

Beaches and diving sites from Dahab to Sharm el-Sheikh and Hurghada are empty or sparsely visited. The beach hotels that are still open have shut down restaurants and wings and cut back on activities and, though they are a long way from the northern Sinai base of the Isis affiliate which claimed responsibility for the bombing of the Russian plane, Cairo, Alexandria, Aswan and Luxor have also been hit hard.

“Now we have no leisure tourism at all, it’s all conferences and business. We’re suffering a lot, as we have no groups,” said Ahmad Samir, assistant sales groups manager of the Marriott hotel chain in Cairo’s upscale Zamalek neighbourhood.

At the popular monastery of St Catherine’s, beneath Mount Sinai, the Bedouin guides sit disconsolate and barely employed. Some nationalities, Americans among them, require a police escort to visit. Along the coast even the rough-and-ready beach camp huts are empty, with even Egyptians only visiting in the smallest of numbers. “I had my own four-wheel drive to take tourists on excursions,” says one driver now driving for another firm. “I had to sell it to make ends meet.”
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Efforts by Egypt’s ministry of tourism to boost arrivals with campaigns on social media have also fallen flat, with the recent #ThisisEgypt campaign hijacked by Twitter users who lampooned the campaign by using the hashtag alongside examples of Egypt’s poor human rights record.

Turkey’s tourism sector is bracing for a similar shock after an Isis-orchestrated suicide attack killed 10 people in the heart of Istanbul’s historic Sultanahmet district, outside the Blue Mosque, this month. Most of the dead came from Germany, the country which sends the most visitors to Turkey – 5.2 million last year – and cancellations are expected, worsening an already bleak year.

Up to 4.5 million Russians were already expected to change holiday plans after the Turkish military shot down a Russian jet that strayed into Turkish airspace on a bombing mission over Syria, and military operations against Kurdish insurgents in the south-east have added to a sense of crisis.

“Things are getting worse for Turkey’s tourism sector, with crisis after crisis erupting before the last one is resolved,” “The situation is so bad that we should simply accept this year as a ‘lost year’ for tourism.”

In Israel, and in the occupied West Bank too, where numbers were only just beginning to recover from the impact of the 2014 Gaza war, tourism is again in reverse following more than three months of almost daily violence between Israelis and Palestinians.

Despite hopes by Israel to market its own Red Sea coastal resort, Eilat, to Russian tourists avoiding Egypt and Turkey, there is little evidence yet of that succeeding. “What we see is not connected to [the 2014 Gaza war] but rather an extended, low-intensity conflict without an end,” Eran Ketter, a lecturer on tourism planning, management and marketing, recently told the Israeli daily Haaretz. “It wears down the tourists and Israel’s ability to launch campaigns, because it is impossible to promise that it will be over soon.”

When suicide bombers killed 60 people in three hotels in the Jordanian capital, Amman, tourism for the first six months of last year declined by $1.5bn (£1bn) in a country where tourism makes up 15% of the economy.

Even those countries least affected by the regional turmoil have not been spared. Morocco has had no major terrorist attack since 2011, but also remains under a shadow. The UK Foreign Office does not advise against travelling to the country, but has warned the 500,000 Britons expected to visit this year that there is “a high threat from terrorism”.

Necessity, however, is the mother of invention. While the usual tourists stay away, some countries are attempting to look to different places to fill the gap left by absent Europeans and Americans. In Egypt the government announced this month that it would grant Chinese tourist groups visas on arrival as a way to boost visitors. For its part, Tunisia is trying to attract new tourists from Algeria to stay afloat.

“Visa-free arrival from China could have a positive effect,” said economics analyst Angus Blair, head of the Signet Institute. “There won’t be the same numbers as from Russia, but it could make up for some of the fall.”

SPAIN: Global Tourist Numbers Up In First Half - UN

The number of international tourists rose by 4.0% worldwide during the first half of 2015 although security and health concerns hit hard some African destinations, the UN World Tourism Organisation said Thursday.

Some 538 million tourists made trips to international destinations between January and June 2015 - 21 million more compared with the same period last year, the Madrid-based body said in a statement.

"These results show that, despite increased volatility, tourism continues to consolidate the positive performance it has had over the last five years and to provide development and economic opportunities worldwide," said the organization's head Taleb Rifai.

Global tourism figures were hard hit by the global financial crisis, declining 4.0% in 2009 as an outbreak of swine flu also contributed to cash-strapped people staying at home but have risen in each year since.

Asia, the Middle East and Europe, the world's most visited region, all saw a 5% increase in arrivals, with the Americas posting growth of 4.0%.

But Africa saw a drop of 6.0%.

North Africa, which was shaken by terrorist attacks in Tunisia, a popular lower-cost beach holiday spot for Europeans, saw arrivals fall by 10% while sub-Saharan Africa had a decline of 4.0%.

"Alongside the impacts of the terrorist attacks, African destinations have been impacted by the aftermath of the Ebola outbreak in a few West African countries and the slower growth of regional economies depending on the export of oil and other commodities," the tourism body said.

Tunisia's tourism industry, which had been recovering after the Arab Spring unrest, was badly shaken in March by an attack on the Bardo museum in Tunis, followed by one in June in the resort of Sousse, that killed a total of 59 tourists.

The UN World Tourism Organization predicts international tourism arrivals will increase by 3.0% to 4.0% during all of 2015, after expanding by 4.7% last year.