By Duncan Miriri

MOMBASA, Kenya (Reuters) - In 16 years of working at resorts along Kenya's Indian Ocean coast, hotel manager Mohamed Hersi has never seen it this bad.

His five-star hotel in Mombasa is devoid of tourists who would normally be crowding its large, ornate dining area and its sunny beaches during the current high season.

"I think that this is the worst ever. The (tourist arrivals) curve is coming down very fast," said Hersi, who has closed down a wing of the 338-room Sarova Whitesands Beach Resort and Spa as room occupation has dropped to 27 percent.

It is a similar story along Kenya's famous coast, from Lamu island to Malindi and Mombasa, which accounts for 65 percent of tourism activities in the industry -- Kenya's top foreign exchange earner and worth $1 billion (511 million pounds) a year to the economy.

People in the industry say the turmoil since the December 27 election is a disaster for tourism in Kenya, which only recently recovered from the impact of the 1998 and 2002 blasts in Nairobi and Mombasa that were blamed on al Qaeda.

Since President Mwai Kibaki's disputed re-election over opposition leader Raila Odinga, unrest has killed more than 600 people, displaced a quarter of a million and unleashed chaos across the nation, including in the ancient port city of Mombasa.

The Kenya Tourist Board had projected a total of 314,995 tourists would visit the coast in the first quarter. It has now revised that figure down, by more than half, to 134,450.

Kenya's currency is on course for its largest monthly drop in January in over 10 years, losing 6 percent so far this month. It is one of the worst performing emerging market currencies this year, which has seen investors flocking to such currencies seen to be safer bets.