Tourism and Hospitality

Hospitality and Leisure

Kenya’s services sector, which contributes about 63% of GDP, is dominated by tourism. The tourism sector exhibited steady growth after independence and by the late 1980s had become the country’s principal source of foreign exchange. In the late 1990s, a terrorism-related downturn in tourism followed the 1998 bombing of the U.S Embassy in Nairobi and subsequent negative travel advisories from Western governments. The government of Kenya and tourism industry organizations have taken steps to address security issues and to reverse negative publicity, including establishing a tourist police and launching marketing campaigns in key tourist origin markets.