GRAMMATICAS CONSULTING LTD
Briefing Note
By Dominic Grammaticas FCA
May 2026
Two fuel price increases in two months. Diesel at record highs. Nationwide shortages, protests, and a transport strike. This is no longer a theoretical risk for Kenya’s tourism sector. It is the operating environment.
Since the Middle East conflict escalated in late February, Kenya’s fuel supply chain has been under sustained pressure. EPRA’s April cycle delivered the largest single-month diesel increase in over two decades. The May cycle added another KES 46 on diesel and KES 17 on petrol, pushing Nairobi pump prices to KES 243 and KES 214 respectively. Even after an emergency recalculation following a nationwide transport strike, diesel remains at KES 233 — historically unprecedented. Jet fuel and industrial feedstocks are tightening further. Refined product supply remains constrained even as crude prices have eased, because the bottleneck is refining capacity and shipping, not the oil itself.
The knock-on effects are already being felt. Transport costs are rising. Food and goods prices are following. The shilling is under pressure. Airlines are introducing surcharges. And for safari tourism operators, every line in the budget — from generator diesel and LPG to internal transfers and charter flights — is moving in the wrong direction.
If you haven’t updated your FY26 forecast yet, you are flying blind.
This is not the time to wait and see. It is the time to model, stress-test, and plan. CEOs and boards need to be working through multiple scenarios and asking hard questions about margins, cash flow headroom, pricing strategy, and operational resilience.
The Role of AI in Business Planning
Here is where it gets interesting. The tools available to help you do this have never been more powerful. AI is transforming the speed and quality of financial modelling, scenario analysis, and strategic planning. What used to take a finance team days — building multi-variable forecasts, running sensitivity analysis across different fuel price and occupancy assumptions, pressure-testing cash flow under a range of shilling trajectories — can now be done in hours.
But the technology is only as good as the thinking behind it. AI does not replace judgement, experience, or deep knowledge of how tourism businesses actually operate on the ground in East Africa. What it does is dramatically amplify the capacity of people who already have that expertise — allowing them to move faster, model more scenarios, and make better-informed decisions under pressure.
How We Can Help
This is exactly what Grammaticas Consulting Ltd does. We combine decades of hands-on safari tourism and financial management experience with the latest AI-powered analytical tools to help our clients navigate complex, fast-moving environments like this one. From forecast updates and scenario modelling through to risk profiling and contingency planning, we bring clarity to complexity, at the speed the situation demands.
If you are a CEO, founder or investor in Kenya’s tourism sector and you want to ensure your business is planned and positioned for what comes next — I’d welcome the conversation.
