Events are crucial for development of destinations across different parts of the world since they possess important social, cultural, and economic outputs. International celebrity events provide additional destination attraction and they create a sustainable tourism industry across many parts of the world. Despite research in recent times in events gaining tremendous interest among scholars and emerging as a crucial area of study, little is known on how international celebrity events hosting influences tour firms' performance. This study explored the role of international celebrity events destination promotion on tour firms' performance in Nairobi City County, Kenya. A cross-sectional research design was adopted for the study. The sample size of the study constituted of 390 managerial employees who were drawn from all the 329 tour firms registered with the Kenya Association of Tour Operators. Stratified, systematic, purposive, and convenient sampling approaches were used to sample the respondents, while questionnaires and interview schedules were used for collection of data. Results showed that the international celebrity events destination promotion depicted a positive and statistically significant relationship with tour firms performance (p=0.000<0.05). The study recommends development and hosting of special international celebrity events in the country by event organizers as the basis of increasing the competitiveness of Nairobi City County as a preferred tourist destination.

The new information era has grown drastically overtime with key stakeholders giving considerable attention to adoption of e-commerce. Travel and Tourism businesses have increasingly adopted e-commerce, which has helped to link key market participants thus enabling easy gathering of information for both consumers and suppliers. E-commerce has brought about a revolutionary change in the way Travel and Tourism business is being conducted away from brick-and-mortar operations. This has changed the way consumers make decisions on personalized travel packages using websites to obtain roadmaps, accommodation, activity programming, air fares, restaurants, entertainment and calendars of local events. This study explored to establish the influence of e-tourism policies on travel business profitability in Nairobi City County, Kenya. This study adopted descriptive research design, which employed mixed method of collecting quantitative and qualitative primary data. The study was conducted in Nairobi City, Kenya’s capital due to its robust economy. The study targeted 172 travel agents that use e-tourism in their travel businesses. The study also targeted travel agent professionals whose docket is marketing, ICT and management of travel businesses. Slovin’s formula was used to calculate the sample size of 120 travel agents. Simple random sampling using the list of registered travel agents under the Kenya Association of Travel Agents as the sample frame was used to select the travel agents to be enrolled in the study. Purposive sampling was employed to select three (3) managers from each sampled travel agent giving a total of 360 managers. Semi-structured questionnaires were used to collect quantitative and qualitative data primary data from the sampled managers. A pre-test of the questionnaires was carried out involving travel agents that were not sampled for the main study to determine its reliability. Descriptive statistics such as frequencies, modes, means, variances and standard deviations was used to analyse quantitative data using Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 22. Hypothesis testing using Chi Square test analysis revealed that the significance value 0.484 is greater than 0.05, and hence the null hypothesis is accepted and alternative hypothesis is rejected. This implies that measures e-tourism policies do not influence travel business profitability. The study concluded though e-tourism policies do not influence travel business profitability is critical in the development of e-tourism in Kenya. Keywords: E-commerce, e-tourism, Travel and Tourism business, Tourism Policy, & Profitability

Foreign scholars move to international destinations and enroll in institutions for academic courses of study. The students form a promising niche’ market and is the third export earner in Australia. Africa is endowed with unique geographical features which attract the students who enroll in programs such as; eco-tourism, heritage tourism, rural/farm tourism and student exchanges between educational institutions. Africa recognizes educational tourism as a promising niche’ market segment to cushion out the fluctuating numbers of other market segments. The region receives about 14% foreign scholars yearly to add to those existing in their institutions of learning. Kenya receives 50,000 of the students distributed as 1% admissions to public universities and 12% to private universities, a constant 200,000 international students annually. The reasons why scholars from developed nations do not prioritize Africa should be investigated to increase Kenya’s market share. The study purposed to establish the tourist activities that are of interest to the scholars. The scholars from all over the globe join Kenya’s institutions of higher learning and throughout their course of study, they will be attached to attraction sites either as part of their study or as leisure activities. UNESCO supports travel of students to foreign destinations in order to enhance and promote culture and international understanding. International students visit several tourist attraction sites and can be classified as foreign or local tourists. Questionnaires were administered to the scholars, the heads of foreign student offices were subjected in-depth interviews while the communities offering tourism participated in focus group discussions. Only 29.7% (98) had involved themselves with various activities in the communities while a considerable number (65.2%) did not involve themselves in the activities within host communities. However, there was a significant relationship between tourists’ activity options and sustainable tourism development, the P-value 0.029 (P-value<0.05). When tourists’ activity options and economic impact were cross tabulated, no significant relationship was displayed because P-value is 0.301 (P-value>0.05). Majority 58.7% of the students were self-driven to the local communities. The study shows that most of the activities linked to educational trips are organized in relation to the products of tourism available within destinations. Keywords: International students, international destinations, local destinations, niche’ market, foreign scholars