Tanzania: How to Ensure Tourists Come Back

opinion By Kasera Nick Oyoo

There is a debate going on: that only 20 percent of foreign tourists to Tanzania tour the country again

later. The million-dollar question then arises: why don't they make a return visit? In my view, there is a business-as-usual attitude among our tourist officials [Watalii watakuja tu. After all, we have Mount Kilimanjaro... ]

As we market our fabulous tourist attraction sites, we tend to forget that some of the best advertisers are foreigners who have toured the country - and then go back home where they spread by word of the mouth their experience(s) in Tanzania

Writing in the Chanzo Initiative, commentator Thadei Ole Mushi attributed the low rate of tourists returning to tour Tanzania again to inordinately high costs.

Arguably, high tourism-related costs are a factor.

For example, a Swedish couple who toured Zanzibar last year complained that, it cost them only $200 for three nights at the Murchison/Kabalega Falls in Uganda, that sum was not sufficient to pay for one night at the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania!

On the sensitive subject-matter of high costs, some officials at the Tourism ministry gruffly responded that "Tanzania is not interested low-value, back-pack tourists."