The Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife is on the spot over failure to salvage iconic towers bearing country’s rich heritage and foreign attraction that have collapsed with little attempt to salvage.
Under the watch of Cabinet Secretary Najib Balala, Hilton Hotel which has been operational at the heart of the Nairobi Central Business District will close after being in operation for the last 53 years.
Others that have unceremoniously folded since the COVID-19 pandemic struck in March 2020 include; Intercontinental Hotel, Laico Regency, the newly opened Norforlk Hotel among others.
The closure comes even after Kenya’s tourism industry has started to pull out of its deep COVID-19 induced plunge.
The hotel industry is one of the sub-sectors in the tourism sector envisioned to deliver on the 10 per cent annual economic growth as projected in the Kenya Vision 2030.
Its contribution to real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been on average, 1 per cent over the last 10 years.
In addition, the industry directly employed 82,900 people and, together with trade, indirectly engaged 9 million people in 2019.
The industry’s growth trajectory came to a halt as it contracted by 9.3 per cent and 83.3 per cent in the first and second quarters of 2020, respectively.
This was an all-time low from a growth of 13.1 per cent and 10.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2018 and 2019 and 15.4 per cent and 9.0 per cent in the second quarter of 2018 and 2019, respectively.
The third quarter of 2020 saw an improvement of 30.4 per cent following the easing of government restrictions and resumption of most economic activities since July 2020.
The positive outlook was, however, short-lived and prospects were shuttered when the third wave was witnessed in the country in April 2021, prompting new containment measures such as lockdown of five counties, extension of curfew hours, closure of bars, with hotels operating take-away services only.
The hotel industry is projected to constitute the majority of the 1.72 million people who lost their jobs due to COVID-19 pandemic however, the Tourism Ministry said that it has started to hire on the back of the tentative recovery.
The country expects the sector, typically one of its top sources of foreign exchange, to earn Sh173 billion this year, up 18.5 per cent from last year, the government said.
