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. … Beyond the three countries at the epicenter, Ebola reached only three others, all in West Africa. Eight people died in Nigeria, six in Mali and none in Senegal, where just one case was diagnosed. The outbreak has been declared over in all three. In the three worst-hit countries – none of them destinations for all but the hardiest back-packer or bush-whacker – the situation remains bleak, with flight restrictions still in place and foreign firms refusing to let expatriate workers back. But elsewhere in the immediate neighborhood, business and leisure travelers are returning, if slowly. Read more…

 

Ebola