Kenyan Tourism
Kenya's tourist industry is known as their second largest source of foreign exchange revenue, with the first being agriculture. There are many attractions in Kenya that allows for a good turnout of tourists annually. Some of the more popular Kenyan tourism sources are the photo safaris that are facilitated all throughout 19 national parks and game preserves. There are also many other attractions that contribute to the quality of Kenyan tourism, including the mosques at Mombasa, Mt. Kilimanjaro, the Great Rift Valley, and the coffee plantations found at Thika. The beaches that stretch out along the Indian Ocean also make for great tourist attraction spots.
Because of the very controversial presidential elections in 2007, as well as the Kenyan crisis that followed and stretched out between 2007 and 2008, the Kenyan tourism revenues went down to 54 percent from 2007 to 2008. The drop caused a big drop from their 17.5 billion shillings gained between January through March to only 8.08 billion, which is only equivalent to $130,5 million in the United States.
But despite such events, Kenya's tourist attractions still helped them achieve the Best Leisure Destination award during the World Travel Fair in April of 2008, held in Shanghai, China.