Looking from a local lens: Inbound tour operators and sustainable tourism in Kenya

Abstract

Few empirical studies on sustainable tourism take into account the perspective of developing countries’ actors. This is even the case in debates about the need to adapt sustainability’s definitions to the context of developing countries. The present study aims at giving a voice to developing countries’ actors by describing how inbound tour operators (ITOs) in Kenya conceive sustainable tourism and their role in promoting it. ITOs were reached through the two official Kenyan category associations for tour operators and through Ecotourism Kenya. Both a survey and in-depth interviews were used to gather data. Results suggest that Kenyan ITOs are familiar with the current definition of sustainability as being constituted of an economic, a social and an environmental dimension. Contrary to expectations, respondents weight their responsibility towards the natural environment at least as highly as their social responsibility. In the end, it is the business long-term survival that dictates this choice: respondents are aware that tourists expect to find in Kenya a flourishing natural environment. Kenyan ITOs are on the whole keenly aware of their role in promoting sustainability to tourist, staff and the community. They experience as a major challenge the lack of institutional pressure from the government. Though this is a common complaint of organisations in developing countries, it is interesting in a Kenyan context where the Government has deployed several policy initiatives on sustainable tourism. A major limitation of this study is the limited sample. Only category associations’ members were sampled, leaving ITOs that operate in the informal economy unheard.

Keywords: sustainable tourism development, corporate social responsibility, inbound tour operators, Kenya