As Ebola ‘fear factor’ eases, African tourism edges back
By Edith Honan NAIROBI (Reuters) – From the jungle-clad slopes of the Great Lakes to the game parks of South Africa, tourism is beginning to recover as the Ebola outbreak in a corner of the continent ebbs and foreigners overcome their fear of the virus. The epidemic has been confined overwhelmingly to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, where at least 8,700 people have died. Inquiries at Safaribookings.com, a marketplace for more than 1,200 safari companies in east and southern Africa, were down 25 percent during the last four months of 2014, but bounced back in January, with a 20 percent rise compared to a year ago. A scaling back of the wall-to-wall media coverage of the handful of Ebola cases that occurred in Europe and the United States – where most tourists to Africa come from – has helped.
