Coastal international tourism and trade received a major boost following the touchdown of the maiden direct flight of UAE national carrier Flydubai at the Moi International Airport in Mombasa.
The plane landed at the airport at 2:30pm on Wednesday and was received by national and Mombasa county government officials among them Transport CS Kipchumba Murkomen, his Tourism counterpart Alfred Mutua and Mombasa governor Abdulswamad Nassir.
According to Mr Murkomen, the airline will be making four weekly trips to Mombasa.
“We believe we are opening the door for tourism, business and medical tourism and opening up Mombasa and the coastal region to become another transport hub like Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. Moi International Airport will benefit from this because we are going to handle more passengers and cargo and we’ll also create more business opportunities for young people of this country,” said Mr Murkomen.
This development is set to drive competition between the carrier and Kenya Airways (KQ), which launched direct Mombasa-Dubai flights two years ago.
Initially, the government had been reluctant to increase the number of direct flights to the Moi International Airport as a strategy to protect KQ’s revenues.
However, political leaders at the Coast and tourism stakeholders piled pressure on the authorities to implement an open sky policy to boost the region’s fortunes which heavily rely on tourism.
“We are progressively balancing between growing our own airline but also allowing more airlines to come into the country to benefit tourism,” said Mr Murkomen.
Dr Mutua said the arrival of the flight is the right step towards increasing the number of international tourists in the country.
According to the Tourism CS, Kenya has the capability to host far more numbers of tourists annually than it currently does.
FlyDubai’s network in Africa includes Addis Ababa, Alexandria, Asmara, Cairo, Dar es Salaam, Djibouti, Entebbe, Hargeisa, Juba, Mogadishu, Mombasa and Zanzibar.
