Should it be too much for Serengeti now?
Well, the National Park has once more won a new title at the World Travel Awards 2025.
Serengeti which was nominated for a new WTA category of Africa’s Leading Big Five National Park 2025 and has just won in the new category.
Serengeti has in the past leading in the awards as Africa’s leading National Park for the last six consecutive years.
Take Five
And not for the first time and in the first ever WTA category, Serengeti scoops the “Big Five,” accolade.
The Africa and Indian Ocean Gala Ceremony, for the 32nd World Travel Awards (WTA) winners, was staged at the contemporary and elegant Johari Rotana Hotel, towering along the Indian Ocean coastline of Dar-es-salaam City.
This is the first time that Tanzania gets to host the prestigious World Travel Awards gala ceremony for the continent.
The previous WTA 2024 event was held in the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa.
The event took place on the night of Saturday, June 28, 2025, almost four months earlier than the usual schedules usually taking place in October.
Famous for the annual migration of nearly 2 million wildebeests and zebras, Serengeti, measuring 14,763 square kilometers of wilderness, is Tanzania’s third largest National Park after Nyerere and Ruaha.
The National Park, featuring all the Big-Five species and spellbinding landscapes, attracts an average of 450,000 tourists per year, making it the most popular wildlife tourism destination in the country.
The legendary Mara River with its larger-than-life crocodiles, cuts through Serengeti as it flows to Lake Victoria.
Serengeti is currently also working to increase its tourism appeal by constructing an international golf course along the National Park’s borderline at Fort Ikoma.
Serengeti Balloon Safaris is among the winners of World Travel Awards.
Recently also, Serengeti grew bigger and gained a direct and virgin strip of land access to Lake Victoria, which is Africa’s largest freshwater body.
The National Park size was increased, stretching its western boundaries to reach the shores of Lake Victoria at Speke Bay, which also gives the conservancy a corridor featuring a special delta similar to Botswana’s Okavango.
Tanzania had dished out 45.9 Billion/- equivalent to USD18.5 Million to compensate the residents who have now moved out to pave way for conservation efforts.
Conservators say moving about 8,000 people out of the Speke Game Controlled Area in Bunda district of Musoma, was essential to conserve the Serengeti’s ecosystem as it faces worsening drought.
The Serengeti national park will now extend to include all the dry land between the lake shore and its current boundary which flanks the highway North from Mwanza, between where it crosses the Mbalangeti River at its Southern end and the Grumeti River some 12 kilometers north.
Serengeti, which initially measured 14,763 square kilometers, has now become bigger with additional 54.67 square kilometers, boosting its size to 14,818 square kilometers but Serengeti will remain the third largest National Park in Tanzania after Nyerere and Ruaha.
Serengeti is also the first National Park to be established in Tanzania, having been gazetted in 1959 alongside its next-door neighbour, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.