Tanzania Tourist Board strives to ensure tourism reaches international level

No one can travel or migrate from one country to another without visa or at least a passport. The story is different when it comes to animals.
Wild beast and Zebra are the only animals who give Serengeti National Park a unique definition for tourists’ attraction in the world.
More than one million wild beasts and Zebra migrate from Tanzania passing Masai Mara River to Kenya every year, the incident that takes them up to five months. This is the period when there is no rain and their graze yard gets dry, so they look for pastures by migrating.
Thus, being the only national park with such incident to happen in the world, have many animals and the second big park in Africa Serengeti has been the most adorable attraction for all tourists.
Geofrey Tengeneza, Principal Public Relations Officer with the Tanzania Tourists Body (TTB) told this paper in an exclusive interview in Dar es Salaam recently that their main responsibility is to publicise all the attractions that can be found in the country to international markets.
Cooperating with other bodies such as Tanzania Tourism Confederation (TTC), TTB develops international marketing strategies to ensure that tourism reaches international level. One of the strategies is to prepare trips for different foreign tourism stakeholders including journalists for them to experience what is happening in Tanzania.

“We recently invited 5 journalists from United Arab Emirates and 9 journalists from South Africa for a three day trip, for the same purpose of publicity.
With satisfaction and astonishment most of them confessed it was their first time to seeing lions live. We know if we win them, it’s easier to make the impact in their countries”. Tengeneza said.
Likewise, he said they are currently preparing for a domestic tourism strategy because there will be no sense to priotise international market while the local one is weak.
Explaining what TTB has achieved all these years, Tengeneza said tourism is the number two sector that gives the government the highest income.
In the past 10 years, the industry has been growing steadily and every year the number of tourists exceed that of the previous year, except for two years of 2000 and year 2009.
In year 2008, the number of tourists came to Tanzania was 770,376 and generated to the government USD 1.29 million, In 2010, there were 782,699 tourists who visited the country and generated a tune of USD 1.25 million, in the year 2011 there were 867, 994 tourists from them, around USD 1.35 million was collected.
Exclusively in year 2012 there was an increase of 24 percent, where the number of tourists reached 1,077,055 the highest figure ever to happen in the country and the government collected USD1.7m from them.
However, between years 2000 and 2009, were not the good seasons for tourism due to major terrorism attacks that occurred in East Africa region and globally respectively.
Tengeneza said the repeated terrorism attacks happening in neighbouring East African countries, like Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo might cause a negative impact to the tourism industry in the country because 40 to 50 percent of tourists who come to Tanzania pass through Kenya, so if terrorism persists it might drag the sector down.
He revealed that when such similar remarkable incident happened in the late 1990s involving the bombing of both the US Embassy in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, tourism sector suffered a lot because many tourists cancelled their journey on fear of their safety.
“The Westgate attack and other related al-shabaab invasions are the main challenges to the tourism industry in the region at the moment. Because we all find ourselves in this part of the continent, foreigners refer us as one people,” he blamed.
Regional competition is another challenge TTB faces. Kenya is mentioned to have a strong tourism record because of well-built Kenya airways which does better in the international market, and this is the reason why most tourists arrive in Tanzania through Kenya, Tengeneza explains.
He noted that if the government could allocate adequate budgets, for more investment and promotions the performance would be better than it is now. Similarly, he said South Africa and Egypt are also doing better following the strong economy their countries have in Africa.
The Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism Lazaro Nyalandu recently launched a Swahili international tourism expo at Serena Hotel with the aim of bringing together different tourists from every corner of the world in October each year, where TTB will be one of the coordinator.
“This will be the biggest expo in Tanzania and the second largest in Africa after the Indaba exhibition of South Africa which is the biggest of all,” Tengeneza boasted.
The world has had different views on tourism industry but most highlights how the industry can affect the local people especially in developing countries.
The tourism concern organization has reported that these days’ slum tours are sold as an alternative to traditional tourism and a more realistic form of experiencing a country - getting in touch with real people and the local culture.
It is estimated that 40,000 tourists visit favelas in Rio de Janeiro each year while around 300,000 visit the townships in Cape Town.
Tours are also widespread in India, Kenya, Mexico, and many other countries in the developing world.

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN