The extraordinary rise of Ethiopia as a destination and a transfer hub for long-haul travel to Sub-Saharan Africa has been revealed in the latest findings from ForwardKeys which predicts future travel patterns by analyzing 17 million flight booking transactions a day.<\/p>\n
The data shows that Addis Ababa (Ethiopia\u2019s capital) has grown its volume of international transfer passengers to Sub-Saharan Africa, five years in a row (2013-17). It also highlights that Addis Ababa\u2019s Bole airport, which is currently being upgraded with a new terminal, at the cost of $345m, has overtaken Dubai as the leading gateway to the region, based on this measure.<\/p>\n
The findings were released by ForwardKeys at the World Travel and Tourism Council\u2019s Africa Leaders Forum in Stellenbosch, South Africa.<\/p>\n
At least some of Ethiopia\u2019s increase in international flight bookings is being attributed to new-found confidence in the wake of reforms carried out by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed since he took office in April.<\/p>\n
These include signing a peace deal with Eritrea in July, a new e-visa policy introduced in June, which allows all international visitors to apply for a visa online and a promise to open Ethiopia\u2019s markets to private investment.<\/p>\n
International bookings for Ethiopia, for the period from this November to January next year, are ahead by more than 40% on the same period in 2017 \u2013 well ahead of all other destinations in Sub-Saharan Africa.<\/p>\n
Whilst visitors to Ethiopia and the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa are coming from across the globe, Europe dominates as a source market, according to the findings; it has grown by 4% since the start of the year. By contrast, growth in visitors from the Asia Pacific region is sluggish, just up by 1% since the start of the year.<\/p>\n
ForwardKeys points out that one of the major opportunities for destinations in the region is to relax visa regimes for international travellers.<\/p>\n
An example is given for the Chinese market, which is now the strongest in the world by numbers of people and by expenditure.<\/p>\n
According to ForwardKeys data, liberalized visa policies had a transformative effect on Chinese tourism to Morocco and Tunisia in recent years, dramatically lifting visitor numbers.<\/p>\n
For South Africa, 2018 was a challenging year \u2013 a water crisis, and the national carrier facing a difficult business period. But seat capacity is now showing encouraging signs, ready for a new influx of visitors.<\/p>\n
Olivier Ponti, VP Insights, ForwardKeys, said: \u201cSub-Saharan Africa is a market of opportunity. Across the region, carriers are increasing seat capacity on international flights by six per cent on average; that is an encouraging sign.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf more governments follow the go-ahead example set by Ethiopia, including reducing conflict and taking advantage of the benefits that can flow from more relaxed visa policies, I would expect to see a healthy growth in tourism in 2019.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The extraordinary rise of Ethiopia as a destination and a transfer hub for long-haul travel to Sub-Saharan Africa has been revealed in the latest findings from ForwardKeys which predicts future travel patterns by analyzing 17 million flight booking transactions a day. The data shows that Addis Ababa (Ethiopia\u2019s capital) has grown its volume of international transfer passengers to Sub-Saharan Africa,… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2527"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2528,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2527\/revisions\/2528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}