National parks offering safaris, such as the Serengeti in Tanzania, are further away from the Ebola outbreak than some European countries.

East Africa’s Serengeti and Maasai Mara safari parks are as far, if not further, from the Ebola outbreak in the west of the continent than much of Europe that supplies the tourists, but you’d hardly guess that from the slump in bookings.

In Tanzania and Kenya, tour operators say tented camps and luxury lodges where lion and elephant saunter past are surviving on visitors who have not yet written off the whole continent because of an outbreak 5,000 km away.

“The probability of dying from a tree falling on your head is prob-ably higher than going on a safari in the Serengeti and catching Ebola,” said John Corse of Nomad Tanzania, one of whose camps overlooks plains where wildebeest make their annual Great Migration, often described as a natural Wonder of the World.

Tanzania – which relies heavily on tourist dollars from visits to game reserves, Mount Kilimanjaro or Indian Ocean beaches – was aiming for a record year to top the more than one million visitors in 2013. That now looks a pipe dream.

The Hotels Association of Tanzania, representing 195 sites nationwide, said business is down 30 to 40 per cent on the year and advanced bookings, mostly for 2015, are 50 per cent lower.

Next door Kenya has been hurt too. Its tourism industry was already reeling from a spate of attacks by Islamists, including last year’s attack on the upscale Westgate mall and more recent incidents on the coast.

Ebola has added to the pain, making dollars more scarce in the foreign exchange market and weakening the shilling.

Safaris are vital to both nations, whose other main exports are agricultural produce, because they tend to draw wealthier visitors, ready to splash out on luxuries like sundowners after a game drive.

“A safari holiday behaves like a form of luxury goods: people consume more of it when they’re feeling safe and wealthy,” said Corse, whose packages combining a week or so in the bush, followed by a few days on Zanzibar’s beaches, cost $8,000 to $15,000 a person.

The probability of dying from a tree falling on your head is probably higher than going on a Serengeti safari and catching Ebola

Particularly galling to some is that neither Kenya nor Tanzania, nor indeed any other east African nation, has had a single case of Ebola, which has killed about 5,000 people, the vast majority in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea on the opposite side of the continent.

The US and Spain, meanwhile, have had cases of infection and also deaths on their soil. Madrid stands fewer than 4,000 km from Liberia’s capital Monrovia, a shorter distance than the game reserves of Kenya and Tanzania.

Several east African nations have imposed restrictions on travellers coming from afflicted areas.

“Our problems started with insecurity long before Ebola became an issue, but Ebola has worsened it,” said Sam Ikwaye of the Kenya Association of Hotelkeepers and Caterers, referring to last year’s deadly attack on a Nairobi shopping mall.

“Our members have reported that tourists are very concerned and have kept asking and seeking assurances that Kenya is Ebola-free,” he said.

Serena Hotels, which runs high-end safari lodges and beach resorts, said bookings were down by as much as 30 per cent in 2014, from the last good year of 2012.

In 2013, worries about election violence, which proved unfounded, also deterred visitors.

Problems for Kenya and Tanzania have knock-on effects on nearby Uganda and Rwanda, also part of the East African Community bloc.

“We sympathise with our brothers and sisters in West Africa. But we don’t have it and we are doing everything we can to ensure Tanzania remains Ebola-free,” said Lathifa Sykes, chief executive of the Hotels Association of Tanzania.

“Africa is not one country. Africa is a continent,” she said.