The Kenya Wildlife Sevice issued a public notice after an announcement that was made by the president in response to a high recession of fortunes of the country’s tourism industry. They decided to have park entrance fees for both Nakuru and Amboseli National parks reduced by 10 US Dollars for foreign nonresident visitors.
This however will bring a little relief for the cost of safaris in Kenya, especially since stakeholders figuring out a way to address the issue with the recent budget announcement, which left VAT on tourism services, transport and park entrance fees. This should however apply to all the other parks in the country since the government has not listened and removed VAT from tourism services.
This ridiculous VAT is the real issue here, for the safari operators and airlines too. Kenya Airways pays huge tax bills now for new aircraft which probably make Ethiopian and Emirates laugh all the way to the bank. There is growing resentment if not absolute disappointment among key tourism players who are fighting the negative publicity from abroad because it is affecting business but the government cares less. Kenya’s tourism leaders suggested a few measures to consider and the government selectively announced some of them but left out the most important ones. Hopefully, government can think of more ways to attract tourists to Kenya otherwise, will loose out on a huge sum of revenue.
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