Virgin boss criticises warnings against travel to Kenya

British billionaire Richard Branson has slammed foreign governments issuing travel advisories against Kenya saying they create the wrong impression about the country and risk destroying its economy.

In a posting on his Virgin Group website, Mr Branson said governments should never publish travel advisories warning its citizens against visiting another country saying this played into the hand of terrorists.

The businessman said the advisories were hurting Kenyan’s tourism sector — and, by extension, the economy — saying that this decreased business is the reason his airline pulled out of Kenya in 2012.

“While the (British) government has a responsibility to highlight facts, advising against all non-essential travel could destroy Kenya’s economy, which depends hugely on tourism,” said Mr Branson, while specifically criticising the United Kingdom Foreign Office, which recently issued such a warning. Kenya's two largest sources of tourists, the UK and the United States, are among four nations that have warned their citizens not to travel there this year.

“This is effectively a ban on travel, rather than leaving people to make up their own minds having been given all of the information. They are giving the false impression that Kenya is too dangerous to visit.”

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Mr Branson is an investor in Kenya’s hospitality industry having opened a luxury tented camp in Masai Mara last year.

The luxurious Mahali Mzuri, Kiswahili for nice place, tented camp charges Sh50,000 per night, a pointer that is target clientele are wealthy holidaymakers.

Most hotels at the Coast have since March been operating at 40 per cent occupancy save for the Easter season when it rose to nearly 90 per cent causing over 2,500 jobs to be lost.

“All tourism to the coast in the environs of Mombasa has effectively ended, causing thousands of people to lose their jobs, hotels to be closed and huge disruption intensified,” said Mr Branson.

This is not the first time that the businessman has spoken out against travel bans having blogged about the same topic on his website early last year and reiterating it after the terrorist attack on Nairobi's Westgate Mall in September last year that left 67 people dead.