Tourists in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park. The country is a popular
tourist destination as it is home to Africa’s tallest mountain, Mt
Kilimanjaro and the Ngorongoro Crater. FILE PHOTO | NATION
The United Kingdom has overtaken Kenya to become Tanzania’s
second largest source of visitors. The number of Kenyan tourists fell to
8.4 per cent in 2017 from 11.7 per cent the year before.
“Total
visitors for 2017 were mainly from the US, accounting for 13.2 per
cent, the second largest source being the UK with 9.5 per cent and Kenya
at 8.4 per cent,” the 2017 International Visitors’ Exit Survey report
showed.
The drop led to a 9.5 per cent decrease in the overall average expenditure per person per night.
According
to the summary compiled by Tanzania’s Ministry of Natural Resources and
Tourism, the “lower average spending recorded was associated with a
significant number of low spending and visits from our neighbouring
countries who mainly came to visit friends and relatives.”
Higher earnings
The
Ministry’s permanent secretary, Major-Gen Gaudence Milanzi said the
overall average cash spent per person continued to fall from $199
recorded in 2015, to $178 for 2016 and $161 last year.
The survey is conducted by a technical committee comprising
experts from the Bank of Tanzania, National Bureau of Statistics, the
Immigration Department and the Zanzibar Commission for Tourism and the
ministry.
Despite Kenyan numbers dipping, there was a
notable increase in the number of visitors from India, the Netherlands,
and Switzerland,” said Dr Albina Chuwa, executive director of the bureau
of statistics.
She noted that visitor numbers increased by 3.3 per cent to reach 1,327,143 in 2017 from 1,284,279 arrivals the year before.
This increased tourism earnings by 5.6 per cent from $2,131.57 million earned in 2016 to $2,250.3 million last year.
Tanzania
is the only country in the world which has allocated more than 25 per
cent of its total area to wildlife and other resources’ conservation.
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