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Tourism gets a lifeline as UK revises travel ban

January 22, 2008

The United Kingdom yesterday offered the tourism industry a lifeline out of the crisis that has rocked it since the outbreak of political violence three weeks ago with the release of a revised travel advisory.

The new advisory removes the blanket ban on ‘non-essential travel’ to Kenya and replaces it with an advice against travel to specific parts of the country.

“This means that Britons coming to Kenya can now get travel insurance,” the Kenya Tourism Federation (KTF) spokesperson, Jake Grieves-Cook said. The revised advisory now cautions against travel to Western and Nyanza provinces, Narok, Kibera, Mathare, Eastleigh and Mombasa.

Mr Grieves-Cook said KTF had also issued an advisory warning tourists against travelling to some parts of the country.

Hotels based in Nairobi’s Central Business District are, however, expected to continue realising low occupancy rates, which by end of last week had dropped to 30 per cent, because the new advisory still cautions Britons against venturing into the area.

The tourism sector has been one of the biggest losers to the political violence that erupted soon after President Kibaki was declared  the winner of the December 27 poll.

Massive cancellations of holidays have seen occupancy rates in most hotels drop to below 50 per cent forcing  some hotels to send their staff on  leave.

It is feared that a prolonged stalemate could leave more than 20,000 people  in the hotel sector without jobs and another 550,000 will be affected by the massive cancellations.

Over the past two weeks, most charter planes have cancelled their flights to Kenya and operators of scheduled flights have reported low cabin load factor.

The British government’s revision of the advisory brings it in line with the one issued by the US government which only cautioned US citizens against travelling to certain parts of the country. Most European countries, however, issued blanket travel advisories on Kenya.

“We hope that this move by the British will prompt other governments into revising their travel advisories accordingly,” Mr Grieves-Cook said.

Blanket travel advisories mean that travellers do not get insurance to the named destinations and always has the impact of travel cancellations.

Source : http://www.bdafrica.com