EDITORIAL: Let’s walk the talk on our tourism potential
The call by a tourism industry stakeholder to promote Tanzania’s unique cultural attractions should be supported unequivocally.
For a long time the country has concentrated on promoting only the major tourist attractions: the Serengeti, Kilimanjaro and Zanzibar, dedicating little or no efforts to other subsectors of the industry. Indeed, Tanzania is now famously referred to as “The Land of Kilimanjaro, Serengeti and Zanzibar.”
The appeal by the founder of Cultural Tourism Programme in the Pare Mountains, Mr Elly Kimbwereza, who is also the proud winner of the World Quality International Star Award on Promoting Quality Culture adds to similar efforts by the sector’s minister Hamisi Kigwangalla in January.
Early this year, Mr Kigwangalla formed a special committee of 21 members to design a ‘Destination Tazanania’ brand, complete with a slogan, after similar efforts failed in 2013. The move, he explained, was meant to popularise attractions that were ‘hidden.’ According to the 2017 International Visitors’ Exit Survey Draft Report last year, the tourism sector has continued to record improvements in visitor arrivals, hitting over 1,300,000 in 2017, more than three per cent higher than the over 1,280,000 arrivals in 2016.
Foreign tourist arrivals in Tanzania soared by 5.6 per cent in 2017, raking in $2.3 billion, from $2.1 billion recorded in 2016.
There is no doubt that if Tanzania invested in diversifying its attractions to include culture tourism, adventure travel, ecotourism, sports tourism (especially marathons), domestic tourism, excursions, geotourism, and so on, the country would earn much more than the $2.2 billion per year that we have been averaging recently .
We could easily surpass the 25 per cent that the sector contributes in total export earnings as well as beat projections by the World Bank, which indicated in January that tourism revenues could grow to $16 billion annually by 2025.
What is holding us back?
