NAIROBI, Kenya, May 23 – Kenya Tourism Board (KTB) is capitalizing on conferences and business meetings to popularise leisure activities in the country.

KTB Chief executive officer Betty Radier says tour operators are quickly taking advantage of conferences hosted in the country to offer travel packages to visitors.

“Business and leisure travel is the way to go and tour operators are making efforts to ease access to leisure attraction sites to visiting pilgrims on short notice,” said Radier.

Combining business with leisure, she added, was a trend among business travelers, noting that Kenya has all the attributes for making business and leisure tourism possible in the destination.

“As a destination, we are lucky to have hosted this event which has once again proven the destination’s capabilities to host high-profile international conferences. This presents us with an opportunity to tap into the great number of visitors to market other experiences to them,” added Radier.

She added, in all major business destinations in Kenya, there is always a wide range of places and leisure travel experiences that travelers can enjoy capitalizing on openings.

The KTB CEO made the remarks presented on her behalf by the KTB acting director of marketing support services Ms Betty Ichan while hosting international media to a tour of attractions within the lake side of Kisumu at the side-lines of the just concluded 9th edition of Africities summit in Kisumu that attracted over 7,000 delegates from across the continent of Africa.

During the one- week long Summit, KTB, noted that visitors were able to book for leisure activities in the destinations such as Mombasa, Masai Mara, Rusinga Island, Kakamega and Nakuru among other site attractions

Lake Victoria Tourism Association chief executive officer Charles Kataro said combining business and leisure was the current practise world over terming the Africities summit a boost to tourism business in the western region.

By Fred Azelwa.