Mwanza City now plans to boost local tourism

From MOSES MATTHEW in Mwanza

TANZANIA Tourist Board (TTB), Tanzania National Park (TANAPA) and St. Augustine University of Tanzania (SAUT) have launched a week-long awareness campaign on domestic tourism that targets students in higher learning Institutions in Mwanza Region.

The campaign aims at encouraging and enabling students to promote tourism attractions in Lake Zone regions. Speaking during the launching of the campaign yesterday, the acting TTB Tourism services manager, Mr Joseph Sendwa, said the initiative focuses on promoting tourism by attracting local tourists in the country. He said so far the number of foreign tourists is bigger than that of locals.
He said that tourism contributes 17.2 percent to the gross domestic product (GDP), which, according to him is small compared to the number of tourist attractions in the country. According to Mr Sendwa, last year the number of local tourists was only 800,000 compared to the 1.1million for foreigners. Mr Sendwa said TTB in collaboration with other stakeholders are in a move to promote the sector at both local and international levels.
He said Mwanza is among the regions with huge tourist attractions including Saanane National Park. The Chief Park Warden of Saanane Island, Abel Mtui, said that the campaign targets students from different higher learning institutions in the region. “We want to ensure these students inculcate culture of tourism.
We also want them to promote tourist attractions in their areas,” he said. Judith Wanda, an assistant lecturer at St Augustine University of Tanzania (SAUT) said the campaign will provide experience and knowledge to students on the importance of tourism and need to promote tourist attractions in the region and the country at large.