#TANZANIA PULLS AHEAD OF #KENYA AND #UGANDA WITH THE LAUNCH OF A NATIONAL CONVENTION BUREAU
(Posted 29th August 2018)
Recognizing the importance of a national convention bureau when it comes to promoting MICE events, has Tanzania now launched their own NCB, for the time being under the umbrella of the Tanzania Tourism Board.
This makes Tanzania the second country in Eastern Africa with such a dedicated promotional platform after Rwanda, which established their convention office in 2013.
In Kenya so far it has all been talk, as is the case in Uganda, with both countries in recent years losing out in a major way to Rwanda’s MICE business, which has shot from lowly positions at the start of the decade to the number three spot in Africa, outranking former heavyweights Egypt and Kenya.
Presently do only South Africa and Cape Town and Morocco and Casablanca rank ahead of Rwanda and Kigali according to ICCA’s latest statistics for Africa.
While Arusha’s International Convention Centre, just like the Kenyatta International Convention Centre, are aged and in urgent need of a fundamental overhaul, has Rwanda a few years ago launched a state of the art convention centre while in Kampala has the stage been set for a complete overhaul of the Kampala Serena Conference Centre, starting later this year, which will bring it to the top of the East African rankings when the work is completed by mid 2019.
Tanzania has in the recent past not made significant inroads into the MICE sector and the launch of their NCB will no doubt change that trend on the double.
Tourism presently contributes some 17.2 percent of the national revenue, accounts for 11 percent of formal jobs and is worth 24 percent of the export receipts of the country.
Rwanda in 2017 saw their conference delegate numbers coming to the country rise by nearly 5.000 to 28.308 in real terms while the country earned 438 million US Dollars from tourism, a rise by 34 million US Dollars compared to 2016.
The annual report of the Rwanda Development Board, under which tourism, conservation and the RCB fall, gives additional information and can be downloaded by a click on the link below by ATCNews readers.
