WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2010-07-04 Time: 17:00:45 Posted By: News Poster
By Peter Mwaura
Foreign Affairs minister Moses Wetang’ula is right. We are giving up money, by reducing visa fees from $50 to $25, in the hope of attracting more tourists.
The hope is vain. Tourists will not come because visa fees have been reduced by half.
We are just giving away good money. Mr Wetang’ula even thinks that rich tourists will not come because the visa fees are too low. “Kenya has been branded as a cheap tourist destination, to an extent that quality tourists prefer to go elsewhere due to the perceptions associated with a cheap visa,” he said.
It is probably more true to say that we are giving up visa fees for tourists that would come anyway, regardless of whether the visa costs $50 or $25.
At the same time, those that are not coming will not come simply because the visa fees have been reduced.
On March 9, 2010, at the ITB Berlin Convention in Berlin, Tourism minister Najib Balala announced that apart from reducing the cost of tourist visas by half, Kenya was also going to waive visa fees completely for children under 16 years of age.
Again, this is giving away more money for nothing. Tourists who want to bring their children along are not going to leave them behind because of visa fees.
There does not seem to be any causal relationship between visa fees and the number of tourists arriving in a country. The most visited countries do not have cheap visas.
These include France, with 74.2 million tourists a year, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation figures for 2009, followed by the United States (54.9 million), Spain (54.2 million), China (50.9 million), Italy (43.2 million), and United Kingdom (28.0 million).
France, for example, charges 60 euros, which is nearly $75, for an airport transit visas and short-stay visas (under 90 days), while United Kingdom charges for a single-entry visa £27 (in Nairobi), which is more than $40.
There are many reasons why tourists visit a country. Most tourists visit a country for a variety of reasons, not just one.
Certainly, even if it was one reason, it would not be a cheap visa. The cost of a visa is but a negligible fraction of what it costs a tourist to visit a country.
What attract visitors to Kenya are such things as wildlife and wonders of nature, including the annual migrations of millions of wildebeest and zebras, hospitality of the people, sex tourism, reasonable hotel prices and cost of airline tickets, and purchasing power parity.
Even after reducing the cost of tourist visas, Kenya is still more expensive than Egypt, Botswana, Tunisia, Ethiopia, the Gambia, Mauritius and a host of other African countries. In addition, tourists stopped flocking to Kenya following the post-election violence associated with the December 2007 parliamentary elections.
Television images of the violence frightened potential tourists, even though not a single tourist was hurt during the violence.
The reduction of the costs of visas was an apparent attempt to revive the tourist industry.
But Mr Wetang’ula said that instead of attracting more visitors by charging less, the impact has been negative.
“Not only does it make Kenya look like a budget destination, but some tour companies are continuing to charge visitors $50, keeping the additional money for themselves.”
He said we are giving the money away to tour operators while a saving of $25 is unlikely to entice a single European or American to travel to Kenya.
At the same time, neighbouring countries such as Uganda and Tanzania continue to charge $50, while Rwanda charges some $60.
Mr Wetang’ula repeated this week what he said last year when the cost of the Kenya tourist visa was reduced by half.
It does not make sense, he said then, because preliminary studies showed there was no increase in the number of visitors since the change in fees. He wants the decision to reduce tourist visa fees rescinded.
Tourists shun Kenya not because of the high cost of visas but because of such things as crime (including muggings and carjacking), violence, tribal warfare, poor services or bureaucratic delays and inefficiencies.
Original Source: 
Original date published: 2 July 2010
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201007020878.html?viewall=1