The first casualty of the mysterious fire which forced the closure of the Kenya's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi has been the tourism industry.
Kenya is home to wildlife reserves, including Tsavo National Park,
the world-famous Maasai Mara and boasts beautiful Indian Ocean beaches.
Tourism is the country's second highest income earner with
nearly two million people coming into the East African nation each year.
There has already been a massive cancellation
of tourist trips to game parks, although the stunning annual wildebeest
migration is now taking place at the Maasai Mara.
It has also affected Kenya's crucial flower and vegetable
exports - Kenya's agricultural brings in about $3.9bn (£2.5bn) annually.
Kenya is the biggest exporter of cut roses to the European
Union with a market share of about 38%, according to the Kenya Flower
Council.
Exporters were stranded with their produce, waiting for international flights to resume.
Vital transport hub
In 2013, Kenya had projected that the tourism sector would grow by around 4% - from the $1bn brought in last year.
It was hoped that the general election in
March had helped rebuild Kenya's reputation as a peaceful and
politically stable country, making it a destination of choice for
tourists after years of unfavourable headlines.
Five years ago, more than 1,000 people were killed after
disputed polls and in 2011 several tourists were kidnapped by gunmen the
Kenyan government said were members of Somalia's al-Shabab group.
In response Kenya sent troops into Somalia and seized most of
the border region from the Islamist militants; and this year's
elections passed off peacefully and were accepted without protest.
The government had set a target of attracting three million
visitors by 2015 by looking to new markets such as Brazil, Mexico,
Morocco and Zambia, Ethiopia and Uganda.
But the airport fire could well undermine such ambitions.
The fire has shown, however, how vital Jomo Kenyatta International is to the region.
It is one of the busiest airports in East Africa and has about 16,000 passengers and 200 flights daily.
Mombasa International Airport, the second best option after
Nairobi, has a capacity for only nine wide-bodied aircraft and has two
runways.
On the first day of flights being diverted from Nairobi, it became clear that Mombasa could not cope
Nairobi-based teacher Rebecca Nichols, who
landed in Mombasa when her flight from Amsterdam was diverted, said her
experience was awful.
"Once we landed in Mombasa, everything became chaotic," she told the BBC.
"Passengers were left on the plane for ages and then in the
baggage hall before being put on shoddy buses which took 12 hours to get
to Nairobi and broke down on the way," she said.
"There were large crowds of people outside arrivals from
planes diverted into Mombasa from lots of different destinations - all
being told to get on these buses. It was complete chaos."
'No alternatives'
It did not give a good impression of the country to visitors, Ms Nichols said.
"I live in Nairobi and had to put up a young
Canadian backpacker who was travelling by herself and was quite worried.
And this was her first experience of Kenya."
Experts are suggesting that the slow emergency response by
the government in dealing with the incident may have also damaged
Kenya's international reputation.
It has certainly dented the reputation of Kenya's national
carrier, Kenya Airways - its shares dropped by 2% to $0.11 following the
fire.
As the plumes of smoke which billowed over the Nairobi's
skyline subsided, fears mounted about the longer-term effects on the
entire economy.
But James Milne, of the management consulting firm Frost and
Sullivan in South Africa, said it was unlikely to have such a negative
long-term impact given Kenya's position in East Africa.
"Realistically Kenya is very well-positioned from a regional
perspective both in terms of having the leading economy and, most
importantly for me, the best-established infrastructure," told the BBC's
Focus on Africa radio programme.
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| Last year, it was estimated that Kenya exported 123,511 tonnes of flowers |
"There are a number of alternative propositions in East Africa,
there's Entebbe, Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, Bole International in
Ethiopia, but the issue being that these airports simply lack the
localised infrastructure to be viewed as a viable alternative.
Kenya has far superior roads and its rail network works, unlike some of its neighbours which were "non-functional", he said.
"Making a big decision to move away from Kenya as a key
transport hub and to move to a totally different country or regional
alternative doesn't look like it would really make sense in terms of the
huge transport costs associated with moving goods to those airports."
However, there is no doubt it will dent Kenya's full economic recovery after a bumpy few years.
And planning for future emergencies is paramount.
"It's very important that the government does set up a task
team that looks at what went wrong… with the key objective being to
formulate an adequate disaster response plan for these sort of
situations," Mr Milne said.
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