Wildlife and Tourism CS Peninah Malonza has said culture and heritage sites received more visitors in the last year.
Speaking on Wednesday as she released the 2022 Tourism performance report, Malonza said culture and heritage sites saw a 114 per cent increase from 2021.
"The culture and heritage sites received a total of 850,359 visitors in the year 2022, reflecting a 114 per cent growth compared to 2021 which saw 401,165 visitations," Malonza said.
The CS said the 2022 total visitations were 16 per cent shy of 2019 numbers.
Malonza said in 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic came, culture and heritage sites only received 196,283 visitors.
She said in 2022, the Nairobi mini orphanage recorded the highest number of visitors, 339,090.
The Kisumu Impala sanctuary has the second-highest visitation at 233,759 visitors.
The Nairobi national park was the third highest at 177,402 visitors in 2022.
The Nairobi Safari walk was the fourth most popular site by visitors at 142,257.
Hell's gate national park was the fifth most popular with 141,139 visitors.
Lake Nakuru national park, Tsavo and Amboseli were also among the top 10 most visited sites last year.
Malonza said more citizens visited the parks in the country compared to residents and non-residents.
Malonza said statistics from the Kenya wildlife services showed that though the number of visitors going to parks has been on the rise since 2020, the country is yet to go back to how it was before the pandemic.
In 2019, 2,276,114 visitors went to parks while in 2022, 2,179,925 visitors went to the parks.
