Why African tourism is rebounding ?

Is Africa becoming a major tourist destination? It is the continent where the number of visitors increased the most in 2017 according to the latest figures published by the World Tourism Organization.

The number of visitors increased by 9% according to the annual report of the UN agency Insights. This considerable leap is mainly due to a return of good fortune for the major tourist countries of Egypt, Tunisia and, to a lesser extent, Morocco. Countries that have suffered, in previous years, from a strong disaffection due to terrorism. Egypt has experienced the strongest growth in the world, +55% of visitors compared to 2016, but it has not yet regained the record attendance of the beginning of the decade. In this dynamic, it is followed by another African country that we did not expect in this ranking: Togo, the second largest in the world with +46% of visitors.

What is driving this growth?

Essentially, the development of business travel according to the expert Didier Arino of Protourism. It is a segment that speaks little to the general public, but sometimes attracts more visitors than leisure tourism. It is now driven by the economic context. This is true for Lomé, which receives the dividends from its position as a regional hub. This is even more true for Kigali emerging as an important centre of business tourism, neck and neck with Marrakech. Cape Town in South Africa is at the top of the most active African cities in this field. It is no coincidence that the Africa Travel Summit organised by Airbnb, the online rental platform for private individuals, which is in fact the world’s number one in the hotel industry, will open today in Cape Town.

Airbnb is attracting new customers to Africa?

With 100,000 homes available on the continent, most of them in South Africa, the platform has welcomed two million tourists to the continent. Hosts, those who make their accommodation available, earn an average of $1,500 per year with this online activity. It is therefore a good income supplement for the African middle class. Airbnb plans to invest $1 million by 2020 in Africa. It is still a modest market for the platform, which offers 5 million rentals worldwide, but a good growth driver at a time when it is facing increasingly stringent regulations elsewhere.

How many travellers in total visited Africa in 2017?

The World Tourism Organization has counted 63 million visitors for the entire continent. If we compare this with Europe, which welcomed 671 million at the same time, more than ten times as many, we understand that this is still a nascent sector. But with very positive trends. The first is the Africans’ enthusiasm for travel. At home or in the interior of the continent. They are the most numerous to feed the flow of business tourism. The other good news is that Africa is increasingly attracting tourists with the best pockets, the Chinese. And some countries have understood that it is necessary to attract this clientele as soon as possible, which is what Zimbabwe is trying to do with a TV programme specially shot for them this summer through the country’s major tourist sites.