Travellers’ Readiness to Travel Post Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 has had a major impact on the global economy with the travel and tourism industry being the hardest hit. Tourism in Kenya is one of the major economic pillars and Kenya is the third largest tourism economy in Sub-Saharan Africa (GoK, 2019). In 2018, the country’s international tourism arrivals grew by 3.9% from 2.02 million tourists to 2.05 million tourists in 2019 (GoK, 2019). Domestic tourism also grew from 3,645,144 in 2017 to 3,974,243 in 2018, recording a 9.03% growth (GoK, 2019). As a person to person industry, the sector is uniquely vulnerable to crises that affect more than one geographical area. Although the tourism industry has shown great resilience to major shocks over the years, it faces major challenges ahead especially the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic shook the world and this led many governments across the globe to impose various measures such as the closure of borders and travel restrictions in order to contain the spread of the virus, in return shattering the travel and tourism industry. Even as the virus surges on, countries around the world including Kenya are implementing strategies to stimulate the recovery of the travel and tourism sector. Kenya started the year 2020 with a positive economic outlook, however, the COVID-19 pandemic is having a huge impact on the tourism industry growth. This prompted the Kenya Association of Travel Agents (KATA) to carry out a survey on the travellers’ readiness to travel to post COVID-19 pandemic.