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| Ngorongoro Crater,Tanzania |
IN its latest monthly economic review, Bank
of Tanzania (BoT) shows that tourism has emerged the top foreign
exchange earner last year and basing on its great potential, the sector
has much to be confident about in 2014.
The Central Bank said tourism had maintained growth to become the
leading earner of hard currency overtaking gold whose performance was
undermined by low output and a decline in global price.
According to the report, foreign exchange earnings from tourism for
2013 were US $ 1.88 billion up from US$ 1.7 billion in 2012 and US$ 1.35
billion in 2011.
This comes at a time when various international surveys reveal that
Tanzania ranks highly in 'search engine appeal' in the fields of tourism
and investment, making the country more likely to attract tourists and
international investors in 2014.
Tanzania's tourism ranking is high because it is offering a tourism experience based on natural wonders and safari.
The most popular online searches unsurprisingly were about 'safari,' 'hiking' and 'protected' areas.
In all, experts say the tourism sector holds great potential because
of the government's resolve to diversify the source market to focus into
Far East and ambitious strategies to improve transport infrastructure
which include air transport, roads and railways.
Asia was one of the world's travel hotspots in 2013 mainly driven by
China's strong economic growth. According to World Travel Trends Report
2013/2014 Outbound trips by Asians grew by 8 per cent over the first
eight months of 2013 and outbound trips by Chinese travellers soared by
26 per cent.
A researcher, Robert Erbes, has put forward the view that everything
seems to suggest that developing countries look upon tourism consumption
as manna from heaven that can provide a solution to all their foreign
settlement difficulties."
To some degree, he notes, this description of tourism as 'manna from
heaven' has gained some support, in part because tourism is a highly
visible activity. Critics might conversely argue that the statement is
rather absurd, if not over-simplistic, given the well-recognised
weaknesses of tourism as a viable development strategy for less
developed countries.
Whatever the outcome of this particular debate, Erbes' statement and
research since then have focused attention on the far-reaching
implications of tourism (for example, its strengths and limitations) as
being a means of assisting in the process of development.
And in a paper titled "Principles of Tourism in Development and
Africa," Peter Dieke another researcher on the same subject, notes that
many developing countries now regard tourism as an important and
integral part of their economic development strategies.
Interestingly, Dieke argues that in many developing societies,
tourism is perceived as a panacea for their fragile economies that are
characterised by a scarcity of development resources such as finance and
expertise.
These resources are needed to increase the economic surplus, without
which these countries would be forced to rely solely on international
aid to support development efforts.
Therefore, the well-recognised benefits of tourism are the usual
reasons advanced for governments' support for tourism. The benefits are
usually felt at two levels: Macro or national level and micro or
subnational or local level.
At the first level, tourism is expected to foster economic growth
through foreign exchange earnings and an increase in state revenue and
at a second level, an improvement in the people's well-being in the
areas of job creation, revenue/ income distribution and balanced
regional development.
In this respect, he argues, tourism is described as an industry
although it has no single production characteristics or defined
operational parametres.
Yet, the sector is also multi-faceted and its economic dimension
cannot occur without inputs of a social, cultural and environmental
nature.
It needs to be stated that as demand for tourism increases, so too
will it bring with it not only opportunities for linkages with other
sectors in the economy, but also consequences of a social, cultural and
environmental nature.
These consequences, such as crowded airports and urban traffic congestion, affect both the public and private sectors.
In these areas where tourism impacts on the country and society,
there may well be conflicts with competing demands for other sectors of
the economy or with community interests at large.
To put the optimistic projection for growth of the sector in
perspective, the World Tourism Organisation (WTO, 1999) estimate is that
the 625 million tourists who travelled world-wide in 1998 generated
about US $445 billion (excluding transport).
For the period under consideration, Africa received nearly 8 per cent
of the global tourist trips (25 million arrivals), an increase over the
1997 level of 6.1 per cent (23 million tourists).
Similar increases in receipts were recorded and the region's share
rose from 3.3 per cent (US $9 billion) in 1997 to 5.9 per cent (US$10
billion) in 1998.
Within Africa, the Northern sub-region had the highest share of
traffic (34.6 per cent) and revenue (33 per cent), followed in
descending order by Southern Africa, Eastern Africa, Western Africa and
Middle Africa.
In developing tourism in Africa, the following areas for policy consideration are important, including:
Well conceived and well articulated but realistic tourism policy
objectives, local involvement and control over tourism development,
forging private public sector partnerships for tourism development,
raising gender awareness to enhance women participation in the tourism
sector, promoting regional tourism co-operation and integration and
allocation of appropriate resources.
In terms of infrastructure, already, Arusha city ranks second after
Dar es Salaam in terms of the number of quality hotel beds despite being
the Tanzania's tourist hub, according to the Minister for Natural
Resources and Tourism, Mr Lazaro Nyalandu.
The municipal city which receives more than 80 per cent of the total
number of foreign visitors, deserves more than the 2,800
tourist-standard hotel beds, according to Mr Nyalandu.
Tanzania's most popular destination, the Serengeti National Park
(measuring 1.5 million hectares), has just 1,540 hotel beds while the
neighbouring Maasai Mara, on the Kenyan side whose size is 30 per cent
of Serengeti, has more than 5,000 hotel beds.
Therefore, it should be added that for the tourism sector in Tanzania
and the rest of Africa to respond to changing realities in the
international tourism market scene, the strategic development of the
industry is paramount.
This requires cooperation from all concerned - the tourism industry,
the government and indeed, the international community to make it
happen.
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