Part of the ever-busy Eastleigh area in Nairobi. [Photo/ hiiraan.com]
The British government has lifted a travel ban it slapped against Nairobi’s Eastleigh area in 2012 following recurrent grenade attacks.This comes after UK lifted similar bans against the Coastal towns of Mombasa and Kilifi offering tourism an opportunity to return to growth.The ban is, however, still in effect in specific towns in North Eastern Kenya along the Kenya-Somalia border.“The British government will remove the travel advisory against all but essential travel to the Eastleigh area of Nairobi,” the UK said in a statement on Monday.Eastleigh is mainly inhabited by members of the Somali community and is a big business hub for products mainly imported from Ethiopia and Asia.The revision of the alerts comes at a time the tourism sector is slowly rebounding having performed dismally for the last six years.Currently, hotel bed occupancy at the Coast is between 70 and 75 percent having risen from 50 percent in the same period in 2016 and approximately 30 percent in 2015.The alert revision is good news to hoteliers who are mostly affected when travel bans are issued.