PRESS

RELEASE

ON

THE

MINISTER'S

VISIT

TO

THE

WORLD TRAVEL MARKET - LONDON NOVEMBER 2011

The Tourism Hon. Najib Balala has downplayed the impacts of the Kenya recent last insecurity The incidences that happened in month. Minister emphasized that the general country tourism trends have exhibited significant resilience and continues to grow by an average of 16 per cent month on month. The Minister was speaking in London at the World Travel Market where he is currently leading a tourism industry delegation. The world travel market is the leading world tourism trade fair held annually in London. This year the trade fair Kenya's stand has the highest number of exhibitors selling the country's unique tourism products. While addressing the World Travel Market Ministerial Summit, Hon. Balala informed the summit, attended by over 86 Tourism Ministers from all over the world, that the bigger threat to Kenya's tourism as in the other long-haul developing nations is the unilateral introduction of air passenger duty. The tax which has been introduced under the guise of environmental and climate change has made travel to long haul destinations much more expensive in addition to reducing air travel capacity. For Kenya the United Kingdom remains its number one tourist source markets having received about 170,000 visitors last year. In addition to these taxes the travel advisories issued by country like the UK and the EU countries exacerbate the problem. The advisories never provide the real picture on the ground. The Ministerial Summit agrees that they protest whole countries that are under turmoil whereas the incidences are far between and isolated. "Travel advisories and the introduction of unilateral taxes is what threatens our tourism industry much more than the isolated insecurity incidences" emphasized honorable Balala.

These advisories are normally crafted by the Foreign Offices in respective countries and most of the time no due consideration is given to their impacts on tourism one of the world's growth industries that supports millions of people in terms of employment and livelihoods in addition to promoting global sociology-cultural understandings and respect among the global communities. In support of these sentiments, the Ministers called on the UNWTO to consider possibilities of developing a parallel travel advisories system within its system to counter the foreign offices advisories by providing accurate and timely updates on security and safety details of the various destinations. This way countries will be able to guarantee the safety and security of the tourist at all times and other national agents will be in a position to respond to the needs of the tourism industry as a national priority. Meanwhile, the Minister has since Monday been holding a series of media interviews with both the mainstream media house like BBC, CNN and the travel media in the United Kingdom with an objective of providing them with updates of the security situation in the country. In his message, honorable Balala has assured the media and the world that Kenya is still one of the safest destinations and the government has undertaken comprehensive security measures to ensure the security of visitors and Kenyans. The Minister will continue with these reassurances to other key European source markets next week.

Hon. Najib M. Balala EGH MP MINISTER FOR TOURISM