Report reveals 11pc growth of air travel to East Africa

Dar es Salaam/London. The number of international air travel to East Africa rose by 11.2 per cent during the first eight months of this year compared with a similar period last year, a new study shows, putting the region ahead of the entire continent.

An analysis by ForwardKeys, which was made public yesterday shows that the region’s growth figures are exceptional since the continental growth rate stood at 5.6 per cent between January and August.

ForwardKeys — which predicts future travel patterns by crunching and analysing 14 million booking transactions a day — says countries like Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia saw little growth or even a decline.

“We are seeing a tale of two Africas, with North African countries suffering from political instability and terror activities and sub-Saharan African countries powering ahead,” said the ForwardKeys chief executive officer, Mr Olivier Jager.

Kenya, Mauritius, South Africa, Tanzania and Ethiopia led the pack of high growth destinations with 14.9 per cent, 11.6, per cent, 11.4 per cent, 10.6 and 9.6 per cent respectively. Looking ahead to the remainder of the year, the picture is highly encouraging for East Africa.

International bookings for travel to East African countries, up to the end of December were 17.3 per cent ahead of where they were at this time last year. Looking at the main origin markets, the UK is 13.2 per cent ahead, Germany is 21 per cent ahead, the US is 21 per cent ahead, France is 16.1 per cent ahead, the Netherlands is 16.6 per cent ahead, South Africa is 9.4 per cent ahead and India is 34 per cent ahead.

An analysis of airport capacity, defined by the total number of seats, reveals that the stars in terms of growth are Nairobi, Kigali and Kilimanjaro. The data has been released ahead of AviaDev, a new airline route development conference and the Africa Hotel Investment Forum Africa’s highest profile hotel investment conference, which run concurrently in Kigali on October 4-6.