Within the tourism sector very few

Within the tourism sector very few permanent positions are created, predominantly at the management level; many of them are filled by executives from large tourism centers such as Nairobi or Mombasa. Employment opportunities for the local population are usually
temporary and low income and typically include basic service jobs at hotels or as guides and porters for multiday tours. Erhard (2000) calculated that only 2% of Naro Moru’s population work in tourism, and its townscape is hardly affected by tourism.
The low importance of tourism as an economic sector is also reflected in the Nyeri North District Development Plan 2008–2012 (Kenya Ministry of State for Planning 2008).
Neither in this publication nor in the Nyeri District Statistics Office (KNBS 2010) is tourism in Naro Moru an issue. It was therefore no surprise that during our interviews the District Officer and other representatives of the public administration such as the Councilor were unable to provide any information about it—apart from referring to the two international hotels of Naro Moru, the Naro Moru River Lodge and the Mountain Rock Lodge.
The Naro Moru River Lodge is a large tourism establishment situated on the outskirts of the town. With 133 beds, it receives the highest numbers of visitors among local accommodators and is thus the most significant employer of local people in the tourism sector: More than 50 persons from the area work there permanently, while the smaller Mountain Rock Lodge employs between 20 and 30 local people. The tourism sector plays an important role only for
about 120 of the total 1813 households in the neighboring rural sublocation of Kamburaini. These are the guides’ and porters’ households (see below).