Kenya’s Tourism Sector Performance Report, January – August 2022
Kenya’s Tourism Research Institute has published it’s latest Tourism Sector Performance Report for the period January – August 2022
Kenya’s international visitor numbers have been steadily increasing monthly throughout 2022, except for a slight dip for August this year, impacting the inbound tourism earnings for August.
Holidays still make up the highest percentage of visitors at 34%, with business and MICE travellers only 6% behind. Q4 is forecast to have less visitors than Q3, but still more than Q2, and inbound tourism earnings could surpass best year 2019 figures in 2023 already with full arrival numbers expected to recover to 2019 levels in 2024.
- When comparing 2019 vs 2022 visitor figures to the end of August, 2022 is still down 31% on the total number of visitors to Kenya
- If this continues over the remainder of the year Kenya would be expecting to see approximately 1,413,695 visitors to Kenya in 2022.
- USA is the strongest source market at 15% of arrivals, followed by UK at 9%, India at 6%, Germany at 3%, France at 2% and Canada at 2%.
- The top 6 markets make up 60% of the total visitors with the biggest international markets being USA, UK and India making up 30%.
- The biggest regional markets in order are Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania
- For purpose of travel, holidaymakers make up 34% with business and MICE making up 28%, transit visitors make up only 5%
- The UK was the most improved source market when comparing 2021 to 2022, with a 256% YTD increase; Spain saw an 192% increase and Italy an 174% increase, with the USA only increasing at 65% year on year, although their total visitor numbers were the highest.
- Inbound tourism earnings grew 101% when comparing August 2021 to August 2022. July delivered the largest inbound earnings in 2022, with April 2021 vs 2022 showing the largest month vs month increase at 173%.
- Full recovery of arrivals to 2019 best year levels is expected in 2024. However, inbound tourism earnings could surpass 2019 figures by 2023, indicating an increased per capita spend from tourists.
Source: KATO