Nairobi, April 8 -- Some 182,000 tourists visited Kenya in January, which is the first time the arrivals have bounced back to the highs seen before the Covid-19 pandemic that hit in March 2020.

This is higher than the 171,000 tourists who visited the country in January 2020, which signals that not only has the sector fully recovered from the pandemic but has surpassed the pre-Covid numbers.

The sector was one of the most badly hit by travel restrictions that cut the numbers to just 60,000 in January 2021 before rising to 91,000 in 2022 and 151,000 in 2023.

Covid-19 plunged the sector to a near halt in 2020, with the country receiving just 565,000 visitors that year, according to the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) data sourced from the Ken...