Kenya has been ranked among the world's fastest recovering countries in tourism revenue after the pandemic blockade.
The Dubai-based "Gulf News" website collected data from specialized media outlets and placed Kenya in the international Top 20, along with destinations such as Spain, the Maldives, the United Arab Emirates, Georgia, Hong Kong, Thailand, Southeast Asia, Saudi Arabia, the Balkans, Switzerland, Armenia and Mexico.
Much, according to data relayed by the Tourism Research Institute (TRI) is due to the entry of visitors from the United States, which numbered 209-360 in Kenya in 2022, contributing significantly to injecting dollars into the domestic market and increasing earnings, since the U.S. is known to be a high-end tourism and devoted mainly to safaris.
England as well as Germany have also done their part, along with neighboring African nations, while Italy, although on the upswing as an "export" of travelers, has not yet made the top 10.
Gulf News, speaking of Kenya, specifies that many of the vacations taken in 2022 to Nairobi and Mombasa as ports of arrival were "revenge trips," or rescheduled trips after the global health situation in 2020 and 2021 forced thousands of tourists to revise their plans.
This means, for those who do not already know, that Kenya is not forgotten and that for many the dream of a vacation to the African country, the moment it cannot be made for various reasons, is only postponed.
TRI quantified last year's numbers at 1.5 million visitors, with a total revenue of about $2.5 billion, compared to $1.2 billion in 2021 when there were 870,000 tourists.
There is to calculate that, according to the body's data, only 36.6 percent of visitors came in for "pleasure vacations," while 27.8 percent came visiting friends and relatives (either from other African nations or Kenyans by birth or origin with foreign passports), with another 27.2 percent being business, conference and volunteer travelers.