{{The Kenya Tourism Board (KTB) is urging stakeholders and the government to focus on keeping Kenyans safe during the festive season as arrival numbers have fallen by more than 20 percent in 2012 due to insecurity.}}<\/p>\n
Speaking at a press conference celebrating KTB\u2019s best tourism board in Africa award from the World Travel Awards earlier this month, KTB Managing Director Muriithi Ndegwa admitted that 2012 has been a difficult year for the industry due to insecurity, but revealed that there may have seen significant growth in domestic tourism.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had a very challenging year, not just because of some of the incidences we\u2019ve had locally, but also because of our reliance on some of the traditional markets that have gone through some very challenging time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has impacted our sector negatively in terms of arrivals coming into this country. However we\u2019ve had positive growth from the emerging countries such as countries in Asia, as well as the regional countries that neighbour Kenya,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
The number of tourists arriving in Mombasa dropped to 121,472 between January and August this year, compared to 156,521 in the same period last year but Ndegwa said that reports from hoteliers on the bookings for December indicate a high number of domestic tourists.<\/p>\n
The CEO of the Kenya Association of Hotel Keepers and Caterers Mike Macharia explained what players in the sector are doing to address the security challenges, but emphasised that it must be a collaboration between all the stakeholders involved.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat the businesses have put in place are safety measures to counter the terrorism threat and this is also seen in shopping malls, public areas and churches,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe threat of terror is there and it\u2019s real, but the issue is what we\u2019ll do about it. It\u2019s not a function of government alone, it\u2019s a function of a partnership between the businesses and the government,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{The Kenya Tourism Board (KTB) is urging stakeholders and the government to focus on keeping Kenyans safe during the festive season as arrival numbers have fallen by more than 20 percent in 2012 due to insecurity.}} Speaking at a press conference celebrating KTB\u2019s best tourism board in Africa award from the World Travel Awards earlier […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-4821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-homenews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4821"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=4821"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=4821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}