KICC CEO vows to hit Ksh.1 billion in profits in the next three years

For over five decades, the Kenyatta International Convention Center (KICC) has been the region's premier conference center.

But, in the recent past, the once glorious landmark seemingly lost its glory, turning into a loss-making enterprise.

This necessitated a Ksh.1.9 billion capital injection to renovate the facility. This investment was done over the last two years.

According to KICC Chief Executive Officer James Mwaura, the capital injection was used to upgrade the facility, pushing it back to a profitability.

They closed the last financial year with a Ksh.230 million profit after tax. A trend that the management says they intend to pursue aggressively.

“The year ending June 30th,we are reporting a Ksh.234 million profit after tax…the gross revenue, and that is just that year, will go to approximately Ksh.4 billion. I am looking at a KICC that will be posting above Ksh.1 billion profit, post-tax profit,” Mr. Mwaura told Citizen TV.

“The strategy to that is just making a major leap in terms of our local marke­t. How we tap into local market is introduction of product offering that are geared towards the local clientele.”

To ensure the sustainability of this profitability, KICC will not only rely on the seasonal tourism activities, management now wants to tap into the entertainment space in search of new revenue lines through activities such as concerts and productions.

“We have invested heavily in bringing back those high-pressure dancing fountains, we are at a very advanced stage of revitalizing that helipad…we are already doing with the KAA metrology so before long we shall have guys shooting movies at that heliport and of course it is another revenue stream,” said Mr. Mwaura.

At the same time, MICE stakeholders have intensified their call to sell Kenya as a single MICE destination even as they called for further investment in the sector particularly in technology to take advantage of hybrid conferences, as well as product differentiation to improve Kenya's chances when bidding for international conferences.

Hasnian Noorani, Vice Chair, Kenya Coast Tourism Association, said: “As tourism players, we need to understand what is the lowest hanging fruit that we need because once we have been able to grow tourism and we are able to understand the lowest hanging fruits and grow tourism, the push for everything will come in automatically.”