EAST AFRICAN TOURISM PLATFORM HOLDS MEETING ON THE SIDELINES OF #POATE2015
(Posted 26th November 2015)
During the Pearl of Africa Travel Expo, East Africa Tourism Platform (EATP) held a Panel Discussion at the Kampala Serena Hotel. The theme of the discussion was “Intra and inter regional Tourism – Focus on Africa” and invited to participate were panelists from six different African countries. The panel discussion was organized to provide a platform for sharing different experiences and explore business opportunities in the spirit of collaboration between African countries in order to develop the continent’s tourism industry. The panelists were given the opportunity to speak on this proposed theme and answer questions from the audience of 45 people.
Panelists:
Carmen Nibigira – Regional Coordinator East Africa Tourism Platform
Manzi Kayihura – Chairman of the EATP and Director of Operations of Thousand Hills Expeditions (Rwanda)
Elie Barikubwayo – Executive Secretary of the Chamber of Hotels and Tourism in Burundi and Manager at Sun Safari Club Hotel (Burundi)
Sirili Akko – CEO of Tanzania Association of Tour Operators (Tanzania)
Mike Macharia – CEO of Kenya Association of Hotelkeepers and Caterers (Kenya)
Geoffrey Mukolwe – General Manager of Swahili Beach (Kenya)
Ralph Tamuno – Co-founder and deputy managing director of Wakanow.com (Nigeria)
Bonifence Byamukama – Chairman of Association of Uganda Tour Operators (Uganda)
Main topics and issues covered during the Panel Discussion:
African market, regional and domestic tourism:
Africans are encouraged to travel within their own respective countries and region to discover the variety and beauty. It is time for tourism companies and businesses to recognize the potential of Africans as a market and start targeting Africans and DMOs to shift their focus on Africa as a viable source market. Understanding the mindset of African consumers is important in order to design a marketing plan that will appeal to them and offer attractive packages. Focus areas to encourage domestic and/or regional tourism are aggressive marketing to raise awareness about the destination, easy of transport and competitive prices. Africans should be the main consumers of tourism businesses on the continent.
Harmonized standards and prices in East Africa:
East Africa is already one single destination, business is already happening cross borders and therefore standards should be the same across the region. Instead of solely focusing on bring down the prices we should also focus on raising the standards in our region and bringing the level of services up, adding worth to our Tourism industry. The focus ought to be on value for money, affordability and accessibility.
Single tourist visa and projects under the Northern Corridor agreement:
The African continent is faced with challenges associated with facilitation of travel; today Africans need visas to travel to 56% of other African countries when North Americans only require visas to visit 45% of African countries and Western European need visas for 58% of African countries. East African countries namely Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda, are ahead with this regard as they have put in place policies and infrastructure to enable connectivity and accessibility to facilitate travel within the region. East Africans can now travel between East African countries only using their national IDs and students cards and foreign residents are issued interstate passes allowing them to freely travel between the three countries.
We have seen many achievements in the East African region; one of the main achievements so far has been the Single Tourist Visa that was launched in 2014 between Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda and has seen considerable amount of interest and high demand. Over 4000 visas have been issued to this date. Benefits of the single visa are seen beyond the tourism industry as many inter border trade have profited from it.
Flagship events such as Kwita Izina, Magical Kenya Travel Expo and Pearl of Africa Travel Expo continue to boost tourism in East Africa and promote the region as one diverse destination.
Crisis recovery for the Tourism industry:
Burundi is going through a hard time because of the current political crisis. The tourism industry has suffered from this crisis as there is close to no business due to the instability in the country. Burundi is a landlocked country depending on neighbor countries for its economy and now more than ever they need the support from the other East African countries.
Kenya also recently suffered from a crisis but has managed to recover from it. The recovery process started by understanding that the region provided enough business to recover and that East Africans were willing to travel to the destination despite the crisis as they had experienced similar situations. The focus was then shifted from international and western markets to domestic and regional markets.
