The impact of the deadly Ebola virus has fallen mainly on three African countries but tourism has taken a hit across the continent, tourism chiefs say.

About 56 million people visited Africa in 2014, a two-percent rise from the previous year, according to UNWTO figures.

However, growth lagged behind that in Europe, Asia and the Americas. And the increase was also down on the robust 4.8 percent gain a year earlier.

“Africa has done well in spite of suffering from the Ebola symptoms which were associated unfairly” with Africa as a whole, UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) head Taleb Rifai said at the Berlin tourism fair (ITB) on Friday.

Africa needed support, especially after the Ebola crisis, he said, adding: “It was very unfair the generalisation that happened.”

Marie France Adieme-N’Dja, of Ivory Coast’s tourism office, said Ebola had created panic.

“We have operators who have had cancelled bookings because of the fear of Ebola. However, in Ivory Coast there has not been a single case,” she said.

Showing off its nine national parks and 550 kilometres of sunny beaches, the Ivorian tourist office is one of many African stands at the ITB trying to woo back visitors as the epidemic appears to have been brought under control.

Almost 24,000 people have been infected with the Ebola virus since December 2013, almost all in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, and 9807 of them have died, according to the WHO.

The countries at the centre of the epidemic are forecast to lose 12 percent of their combined gross domestic product this year, according to World Bank estimates.

Africa’s association with Ebola however has spread much further than the western part of the continent actually affected.

“There was an impact, we got a few cancellations,” a tourism professional from a Kenyan tour operator, who declined to be identified, said at the ITB, which runs until Sunday.”

He bemoaned that some customers made up their minds not to go to Africa without inquiring more deeply about Ebola.

“The distance between South Africa and west Africa, or Kenya and west Africa, is further away than the distance between west Africa and North America even,” Rifai, UNWTO’s secretary general, pointed out.

Industry experts from Namibia – a popular safari destination for Germans in particular – at the fair were keen to press home a similar message.

Digu Naobeb, chief executive of the Namibia Tourism Board, said he had resorted to using a map since the Ebola outbreak to point out to tour operators exactly where his country is.

“In fact, Europeans are closer to the epicentre of Ebola than Namibia,” he said.

As a result of acting quickly to try to allay people’s fears about Ebola, he said tourism to Namibia had seen “a bit of a decline but not very significant”.

One initiative set up by several tourism organisations to combat “geographical ignorance” is the website unite4westafrica.org to promote a positive image of west Africa.

It also sets out to whet visitors’ appetites for countries in the region that have not been touched by Ebola, such as Senegal, Benin or Burkina Faso.

Source: 3 News

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