TANZANIA TOURIST BOARD SIGNS MOU WITH ETHIOPIAN AIRLINES
Information from Dar es Salaam speaks of a new cooperation agreement which was signed yesterday between Ethiopian Airlines and the Tanzania Tourist Board for an initial two year period of cooperation. Ethiopian Airlines flies multiple daily frequencies from Addis Ababa to Tanzania, covering Dar es Salaam, Kilimanjaro International Airport and Zanzibar. Dr. Aloyce Nzuki, the CEO of the Tanzania Tourist Board, signed the agreement and expressed his hope that the partnership would help to increase visibility for Tanzania Tourism while offering support to the country’s tourism industry vis a vis joint promotions, reduced air fares when attending international tourism trade fairs and by bringing in travel agents, tour operators and members of the international media to write about the country’s wide range of attractions.
‘This partnership is good but we need to expand this programme to include other big international airlines, like Emirates, Qatar and Turkish or KLM. I hope we have not done this as an exclusive deal because otherwise we as Tanzania could lose out by missing the others. We should work with all airlines bring international tourists to our country so that it is easier to target new markets. Those Gulf airlines are now flying everywhere and we can get their passengers from all over the world to come to Arusha or Dar es Salaam very easily. And some of these airlines have big promotion budgets. That is what we have to tap into because alone we have a limited capacity to reach our target markets’ said a regular source from Arusha when the news broke and stakeholder input was sought. No comments were available from the airline nor could it be established who signed the MoU on their behalf alongside Dr. Nzuki. The agreement is effective immediately and runs over an initial 24 months period.
