Australian firm vows to promote tourism

The Australia-based firm has 450 offices world-wide, employs more than 6,500 staff and has global turnover of more than 5.0 billion US dollars. FCM General Manager in Middle East and Africa Network, Mr Ciarn Kelly, said in Dar es Salaam on Tuesday evening the partnership will facilitate to promote country’s tourism attractions to its over 20 member countries in Middle East and Far East.

“Under the partnership, our role will be to promote the tourism attractions of the country. Tanzania is one of the best destinations in the world,” said Mr Kelly during a ceremony to officially unveil the partnership between FCM Travel Solutions and Antelope Safaris.

Antelope Safaris Marketing Manager, Mr Said Bakari, pointed out that Antelope Safaris joined FCM Group of Travel Solutions in 2014 after careful consideration on the global impact in the travel industry and the commercial benefits that are available. “We understand that there exist a number of challenges ahead of us but we are determined to thrive to make use of all opportunities within the network,” he said.

Mr Bakari said the partnership provides Antelope Safaris with opportunity to integrate fully to the global travel network, saying the partnership will benefit the local travel agency. “Nowadays, no company can have meaningful breakthrough without association with other strong partners in other parts of the world,” he observed.

Mr Bakari said Tanzania is a destination that also needs to sell itself to the world of travelers noting that all FCM members will benefit tremendously from the global network. “We would like to inform our clients that our membership with FCM will increase our brand value internationally which will also benefit our clients in their travel movements all over the world,” he said.

The Antelope Safaris Marketing Manager said the agency’s future plans is to make sure that all their subsidiary services are involved into FCM branding and networking depending on the rate of growth and requirements.

The bank of Tanzania in a recent monthly economic review report shows that the services receipt increased by 10.3 per cent to 3.7 billion US dollars from the receipts recorded in the year ending last August.

“This performance was mainly driven by an increase in receipts from travel which is mainly tourism related activities (contributed almost half) and transportation,” the report shows.

The report showed that tourism contributed 1.16 billion US dollars. The good performance of the two service categories was explained by increased number of tourist arrivals and volume of transit goods, respectively.