UAE families drop Africa travel plans over Ebola

Holiday makers have cancelled, postponed or altogether stopped their travel plans to Africa for fear of the Ebola virus, according to travel agents here.

by

Olivia Olarte-Ulherr

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Published: Sun 10 Aug 2014, 11:52 PM

Last updated: Sat 4 Apr 2015, 5:51 AM

“They stopped now,” said Dinesh Nair, in-charge of leisure at Omeir Holidays. According to him, five families have already cancelled their safari trips to Kenya and Tanzania while a group of 15 has asked to postpone their trip to Tanzania indefinitely.

“They already paid, and we have issued the tickets and hotel stays. Two were supposed to leave last week, one this week and another by the end of August.”

The Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya is a popular tourist destination. — Photo courtesy Marcopolo Holidays

Nair said that his office has co-ordinated with the local destination management company (DMC) to cancel reservation without charges and issue refunds.

“We waived off our charges to the clients because this is a natural occurrence that’s unpredictable, not their mistake. This is not the first time we’ve done this,” added Nair.

Rasheed AK, tour manager at Bin Moosa Travel, said the agency has two cancellations for Kenya and Rwanda although they received inquiries about their safari package for the upcoming Eid holiday in October.

“There are some enquiries but nobody is encouraged at the moment. People are panicking ... nothing is going to happen in these countries nowadays. If the situation becomes normal, maybe they can rethink,” Rasheed said.

“Only business travels are happening at the moment to Kenya, South Africa and Zanzibar but not packages,” he added.

At Bin Saleh Travel, meanwhile, none have booked their holidays this season for Africa. Other travel agencies have similar stories.

Seychelles and Morocco destination, however, are not affected and “people are still travelling to those places”.

Despite the cancellations, all three companies said their business is not affected because majority of their clientele prefer to travel to Europe, US and the Far East and only two to three per cent go to Africa.

Marcopolo Holidays in Sharjah has been promoting tours to Africa since 1997 and majority of its business is in this region.

Kunaal Nanik, holidays manager at Marcopolo, said so far none of its clients have cancelled but those who expressed interest are “reconsidering their travel plans” or have put their bookings on hold.

“They’re taking a wait-and-watch approach… (Although) most of the movement is in the East and South Africa, people are concerned (since) the situation is more severe now. We are not (pushing) clients, as well, we are making them decide for themselves.”

“There is a fear in Africa as there’s a lot of movement internally. We have safari enquiries for Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Namibia, but people are reconsidering, (they) are afraid of getting in contact with someone. In Africa they are borderless, people can move around easily and that’s a concern,” Nanik explained.

He said that the fear of contracting the deadly disease is affecting their business in terms of time spent “planning and tweaking and results in nothing and we have to start again with a new destination.” Nanik noted that they are giving their client options so they “don’t lose business altogether”.

“We have to be creative in offering (alternate) options to clients,” he said, noting that those keen on nature experience are offered Nepal, Borneo, Malaysia or South America.

He said he expects the situation to change only once the Ebola virus is contained, vaccines become available and the risk has been downgraded.

On Friday, the World Health Organisation declared the Ebola outbreak in West Africa to be an international public health emergency due to the “serious and unusual nature of the outbreak.” As of August 6, the cumulative number of cases attributed to EVD in the four countries — Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone — stands at 1,779, including 961 deaths.

olivia@khaleejtimes.com


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