Nairobi – Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda are in the process of formulating their own broad tourism plans in an effort to implement the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development’s (Igad) Sustainable Tourism Master Plan.

Rwanda, which is not a member of Igad, is also keen to come up with a tourism blueprint alongside the regional bloc’s plan.

The states have been doing this with the support of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (Uneca) through its Sub-Regional office for Eastern Africa. Uneca is in the process of recruiting a substantive tourism officer to support the implementation of the Sustainable Master Plan for the Igad Region, 2013 - 2023.

The Igad master plan will provide member states with a regional framework for sustainable tourism development with a view to contributing to socio-economic development, poverty alleviation and to promoting regional integration.

Although each country was expected to domesticate many of the plan’s provisions, they were given leeway to come up with strategies that also fit into their own economic, social and infrastructure contexts

"Because there is no size that fits all, the domestication process will be context and country-specific, depending on the state of maturity of the tourism sector in the country concerned, its endowments, state of its soft and hard infrastructure including human resources,” said Dr Geoffrey Manyara, the head of the team of experts that co-ordinated the formulation of the tourism master plan.

Ethiopia, the development of whose national tourism master plan is at an advanced stage, is expected to bank on its enviable ability to keep terrorists at bay as well as a significant cultural heritage as it develops its hospitality sector.

Besides being ranked at position 33 globally in terms of cultural and heritage resources - which is above Egypt’s 39th position - Ethiopia is regarded as one of the safest countries in the world.

But for far too long, Addis Ababa has not been leveraging its comparative advantages. Consequently, it received a mere 550,000 tourists last year while Egypt has been getting a whopping nine million international tourists each year -even with the many political crises Cairo is facing.

But Ethiopia is finally shedding its passive approach to tourism development.

Dr Manyara said, to capitalise on its comparative advantages, the country has launched the National Tourism Transformation Council that is chaired by Prime Minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, as well as the Ethiopian Tourism Organisation, which is now charged with the development and marketing of the country’s tourism products.

The implementation of the 10-year master plan by individual Igad members is the continuation of a process that began in 2010 when Uneca commissioned a study on the sector in East Africa. Among the study’s conclusions was the need for a regional brand identity and the creation of a unified approach to tourism development within Igad.

Further, member states were urged to develop their respective tourism master plans and align them to the broader regional framework.

The regional plan was officially launched by President Uhuru Kenyatta last December during the Igad Tourism Inter-Ministerial Forum held in Nairobi. During the occasion, Uhuru said Africa’s share of the global tourism industry stood at 52.4 million or 5.1 per cent of international arrivals, which translated to $33.6 billion or 3.1 per cent of international tourism revenue.

The drafting of the plans comes at a time when tourism in East Africa has taken a severe thrashing following heightened terrorist activity in the region.

Compounding this has been a reluctance by national marketing agencies to acknowledge changing global trends in their marketing strategies and to develop alternative investment and diversification options.

Until recently, when Kenya began to champion a more robust regional economic diplomacy, bodies such as the Kenya Tourist Board (KTB) continued to give intra-regional tourism a wide berth even though it constitutes the biggest market for various destinations.

Indeed, regional tourism far outweighs the European or the American tourism market. This is authenticated by data from the UN World Tourism Organisation which demonstrates that African tourists form the largest segment of the tourists arriving on in the continent.

For instance, in 2009, regional visitors accounted for 46 per cent of tourist arrivals on Africa, compared with 31 per cent from Europe, 4 per cent from the Middle East, 3 per cent from Asia-Pacific and America.

"Despite the changing trends in domestic, regional and global markets, there is still a tendency, not just within the Igad region, but (in) Africa as a whole, to concentrate marketing efforts and resources in the traditional Western European market,” says the Sustainable Tourism Master Plan.

To Dr Manyara, this scenario is partly due to foreign domination in many aspects of the sector with the exception of the hotel sub-sector, where such domination has diminished significantly.

Still, Igad member countries have not been organising regional tourism fairs like the World Travel Market conducted in Britain.

Dr Manyara attributes this to the colonial legacy. Nevertheless, some regional marketing bodies are organising fairs such as Indaba in South Africa. KTB is also said to be planning a tourism fair in Kenya.

It is expected that Igad members will attempt to capitalise on the expanded, but ignored regional market. But how well they fare in this regard may depend on how far they develop what the Igad master plan calls "appropriate products.”

This will aid in tapping into not just the emerging Asia-Pacific market, but more importantly, the African regional tourist market.

This recommendation is in line with emerging hospitality trends that show that Europe as a source market for tourists is declining in importance.

Indeed, data posted in the master plan shows that in future, the Chinese market will constitute a large share of the global source market and that although for now the share of the African and the Middle East market is relatively small, they are considered the fastest growing markets at 6.2per cent and 9.9 per cent, respectively.