The next tourist considering a Kenyan safari may no longer start the trip by typing “best safari in Kenya” into Google, but by asking ChatGPT or another AI assistant where to go, what to see, and where to stay.
The shift is forcing Kenya’s tourism industry to rethink how it sells the destination, with visibility increasingly depending not only on attractive websites and social media, but on whether artificial intelligence can find, understand and recommend Kenyan experiences.
Kenya welcomed 2.7 million international visitors in 2025, up about nine percent from 2.47 million the previous year, while the wider tourism sector generated about Sh500 billion in earnings, raising the stakes around how future travellers discover the country.
The Kenya Tourism Board (KTB) says it is responding by changing the type of information it puts online, moving beyond conventional tourism brochures and photographs towards content that AI systems can read, understand and use.
“Kenya is making its content easily readable by AI tools, meaning we are making our content more AI-discoverable,” KTB chief executive June Chepkemei said.
“Moving away from great brochures and images to having digital content that is machine-readable, structured, authoritative and consistent,” she added.
Kenya Tourism Board CEO June Chepkemei.
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group
The change reflects a broader transformation in travel, where generative AI is increasingly used to discover destinations, build itineraries, recommend experiences, and connect travellers with bookable products.
Booking.com’s 2025 Global AI Sentiment Report found that 67 percent of travellers had already used AI in some part of a trip, while 89 percent wanted to use AI in future travel planning.
Travellers use AI mainly to research destinations and when to visit, find cultural activities, and identify restaurants, with AI assistants emerging as a more trusted source for travel planning than influencers, according to the study.
Google has introduced AI-powered travel planning that can build itineraries, search for deals and help turn plans into bookings, while Expedia has integrated its travel service into ChatGPT so users can search flights, hotels and destinations inside an AI conversation.
For Kenya, this creates a new marketing battle with the target not being merely getting a destination onto a traveller’s screen, but ensuring it is among the answers generated when the traveller asks a machine what to do.
KTB is developing what Ms Chepkemei describes as a national digital content infrastructure intended to give even small attractions and experiences a credible online footprint.
“KTB is systematically filling the digital ecosystem with high-quality, authoritative, structured Kenyan content,” she said.
AI is set to potentially help Kenya spread demand beyond the country’s most famous attractions, hotels and safari properties by matching travellers with experiences according to their interests rather than simply their popularity online.
Dr Mohanjeet Brar, managing director of Gamewatchers Safaris & Porini Camps, says AI can reproduce the bias already present in the digital ecosystem since properties with the strongest online presence can appear more prominently than smaller operators with limited marketing budgets.
“One limitation is that online visibility does not necessarily reflect the quality or suitability of a safari property,” Dr Brar says.
“Kenya has wonderful smaller camps and lodges that receive relatively little online attention. They may be a much better fit for a particular guest than a heavily marketed property, yet AI can overlook them.”
Dr Brar says the human travel professional still has an important role since choosing a safari is different from merely assembling an itinerary.
“A good agent helps customers discover options beyond the most visible online choices,” he says.
“They also help people work through uncertainty: whether a safari will suit an older parent, whether their children will enjoy it, or whether the experience justifies a significant expenditure.”
AI could consequently take over some of the routine work traditionally performed by travel agents while leaving the more complicated, personal and risk-sensitive decisions to humans.
“Generic destination information and standard itinerary writing are becoming less valuable. AI can already do much of that well,” Dr Brar says.
But he argues that first-hand knowledge, personal reassurance and accountability remain difficult to automate, particularly for expensive or once-in-a-lifetime holidays.
At Sarova Hotels, marketing creative Norman Gitimu says social media has shortened the distance between inspiration and booking, with travellers increasingly encountering hotels through short videos, influencers and content generated by previous guests.
“Social media has become a booking influencer because guests are now discovering Sarova properties through Reels, TikTok, influencer content and guest-generated content before visiting the website,” observes Mr Gitimu.
The hotel chain, however, faces the same measurement problem emerging across the industry in that it cannot yet establish how many customers arrived because an AI system recommended its properties.
“We can’t quantify or track how many people are discovering Sarova through AI, and how many of those visitors ultimately book their stays with us,” Mr Gitimu said.
Pristine Mara Bay Lodge is seeing a similar challenge, with Head of Sales and Marketing Fridah Marangu describing the modern customer journey as “far more digital, visual and fragmented”.
A traveller may discover a lodge on Instagram, investigate it through Google or an AI platform, compare rates on an online travel agency and eventually book through a travel adviser or directly with the property.
“The biggest change is that discovery and booking are no longer necessarily happening on the same platform,” Ms Marangu said.
This means tourism businesses may soon need to measure something different from conventional website traffic and booking conversions.
Ms Marangu says the lodge is already trying to make itself “AI-discoverable” through accurate website information, search optimisation, consistent property details, reviews and structured information on rooms, experiences, location and sustainability.
Sarova, for instance, is using Copilot to identify upcoming events and conferences in major cities, allowing its teams to pursue potential business opportunities, while AI has reduced the time required for content creation, campaign optimisation, segmentation and personalised communication.
At Pristine Mara Bay Lodge, Ms Marangu says the immediate gains are more about productivity than cutting jobs.
“AI has reduced the amount of time required for repetitive commercial tasks such as drafting communications, developing initial proposals, summarising information, preparing marketing copy, adapting content for different markets and conducting preliminary research,” she says.
Ms Chepkemei says the tourism industry lacks a consented, unified view of the traveller from the moment they become interested in Kenya through booking, visiting and returning home.
“Most of the traveller data lies with airlines, travel agents, hotels and other service providers,” she says.
“What KTB does not have is a consented, unified, end-to-end view of the traveller, from inspiration through booking, visit and post-trip, which is what personalised marketing needs.”
But the problem is not unique to Kenya. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has identified data protection, consumer protection, skills and the ability of smaller tourism businesses to keep pace with AI as central challenges for destinations adopting the technology.
For Kenya, the opportunity comes as the country seeks to push international arrivals towards five million while expanding tourism earnings and spreading visitors beyond established attractions.
The country already has a large tourism product to feed into the emerging AI ecosystem, including safari, beaches, culture, adventure and business travel, while KTB has been developing tourism circuits covering all 47 counties.
Ms Marangu says Kenya needs to sell conferences not merely as events held in Nairobi, but as complete business-and-leisure experiences combining meetings with safari, coast, conservation and culture.
“Kenya can offer something extraordinary: conference plus safari, conservation, culture, coast and incentive travel within one destination,” she said.
“Our opportunity is therefore not simply to compete on conference halls and hotel rooms. It is to position Kenya as a destination where international delegates can conduct business and then experience something genuinely memorable.”
The global travel industry is already moving towards AI agents that can search, compare and eventually complete more of the journey on behalf of travellers.
The World Travel & Tourism Council and Trip.com Group say such agents could automate significant parts of travel searches and bookings by the end of the decade.
