Tourism Cabinet Secretary Peninah Malonza has said she is in talks with actress Lupita Nyong'o to help market the country's tourism sector.
Malonza said that she is actively making headway in her discussions with Lupita on matters to do with promoting the country’s tourism sector to the rest of the world.
“I have been trying to reach out to Lupita and I think we’re at some engagement and I believe soon she will come on board to market Kenya,” Malonza said on Citizen TV on Wednesday.
She said her ministry is also reaching out to Kenyan heroes and young influencers that will help in a greater capacity to advertise Kenya to their multitude of followers locally and internationally.
“We have moved into recruiting tourism ambassadors. We’ve realized that there is a high younger generation and therefore we’re reaching them through the young ambassadors, the miss tourism, miss world and whoever is out there we can call an influencer,” she said.
“We’re also going a notch higher to reach out to influencers and heroes like Eliud Kipchoge, one of our influencers.”
The 2022 Tourism performance report recently released by the CS highlighted that Kenya’s tourism sector is performing better than the global average as the industry continues to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic setback.
Industry figures showed that in 2022 the sector recovery in Kenya stood at 72 per cent from the 2019 visitor arrival levels, above the global recovery levels of 63 per cent.
Tourism revenues in 2022 grew by 83 per cent to Sh268.09 billion compared to Sh146.51 billion in the previous year.
The easing of the Covid-19 restrictions and opening up the Kenyan airspace saw the number of international visitor arrivals into Kenya hit 1,483,752, which was an increase from 870,465 recorded in 2021.
