Along Kenya's volatile coast region, where 23 hotels have closed in the first three months of the year, hoteliers also reported cancellations but said the true extent of the damage will become clearer on Tuesday when European tour operators return to work after the Easter holiday.
A veteran Kenyan hotelier and chair of the Kenya Coast Tourism Association, Mohammed Hersi, said tourism is greatly compromised in Kenya.
"The status of the tourism industry, especially at the coast, is not good at all. The persistent advisories even on non-essentials is not helping us at all and the recent attack may not have happened in Mombasa but happened in Garrisa where we lost many young people which is very very unfortunate that equally paints the destination in a negative picture," said Mohammed Hersi.
Hersi said some of the management and staff at his luxury Heritage Group hotel chain had recently taken pay cuts of between 20 to 30 percent, hoping to avoid lay-offs during one of the worst periods for Kenya's tourism sector in recent memory.
"For us to survive in that many hotels, one have sent staff on unpaid leave, some are actually laying off people, others are retrenching and some are actually taking pay cuts," Hersi added.
"Talking about hotels there are hotels that are on 50 percent pay cuts," Hersi added.
Al Shabaab militants have killed over 400 people in Kenya since April 2013 with the government struggling to stop fighters and weapons coming across the 700 km border with Somalia.
Kenya has shown no inclination to pull out of Somalia where its troops, part of an U.N.-backed African Union peacekeeping mission, have wrestled swathes of territory from the Islamist group.
The attack has piled pressure on Kenyatta, who on taking office in April 2013, vowed to triple tourist numbers to five million annually within five years, and get economic growth into double figures to lift millions out of poverty.