Just in time for some 150 hosted buyers and international media representatives coming to Kenya, to experience the country close up and personal ahead of the upcoming Magical Kenya Travel Expo which starts next Wednesday in Nairobi, has the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office cleared Nairobi for unrestricted visits, apart from the area of Eastleigh.
Earlier in the year had the UK taken the unprecedented step of slapping Kenya with anti-travel advisories previously only used against countries at war such as Libya, Syria or Iraq, prompting more strains on already under stress bilateral relations. The immediate fallout at the time were British touropertors in a knee jerk reaction pulling out their charter operations to Mombasa and literally chasing their tourists off the sunbeds into the transfer busses to the airport and fly them home. The revenue losses were massive for the coast tourism industry in Kenya and serial hotel closures were reported at the time alongside major job losses.
Kenya’s tourism industry, and society at large, understandably reacted sharpish and with open anger against the British High Commission and the FCO, demanding the damaging advisories to be toned down, but the damage was done as other Western nations swiftly followed suit.
The most recent FCO travel advisory on Kenya, for the first time since, is reducing in terms of areas declared no go for UK citizens, in addition to which was at last mention made that the country’s safari circuit is fundamentally safe to visit.
There is speculation that, considering that no new incidents have taken place of late, that the FCO travel advice on Kenya may be further relaxed in coming weeks with much hope vested that the transit route from Mombasa’s international airport to the beaches on the North and South coast be declared safe. Right now it is the transit element which was named as dangerous while the airport and the beaches in contrast were given the green light.
Next week’s MKTE 2014 forms an integral part, if not a corner stone of Kenya’s recovery marketing programme and the private sector as well as the public sector will be keen to showcase the country as a safe destination which still got what it takes to give visitors not just value for their money but continues to make for those magical moments a holiday of a lifetime is supposed to produc
