Tourists admire animals in Serengeti National Park. PHOTO | COURTESY
Arusha. Tour operators’ painstaking efforts to recoup the multi-billion-dollar tourism industry, amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, have substantively paid dividends, thanks to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) support.
At the height of pandemic, Tanzania Association of Tour Operators (Tato) through the UNDP’s backing in collaboration with the Government, undertook a number of response measures, yielding tremendous impact in terms of commanding a thick tourists traffic and new bookings thus painting a bright future for the industry.
Despite being brutally assaulted by the pandemic, latest official statistics from the State house show the tourism industry recorded a nearly 126 per cent growth in terms of the number of visitors from 2020 to 2021.
In her message to welcome the New Year 2022, President Samia Suluhu Hassan said that 1.4 million tourists flocked into the natural resources rich nation in 2021 amidst the Covid-19 pandemic; compared to 620,867 in 2020.
“This implies that in 2021, there was an increase of 779,133 tourists who visited Tanzania,” she said in her address televised live by the state-run Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation, adding: “Our expectations are that the tourism industry will continue to flourish in 2022 and beyond,”
“The data speaks volumes on the positive impact of UNDP’s backed Tato and the Government initiatives have had on tourism,” said Tato CEO, Mr Sirili Akko, adding: “This is just the beginning of our journey in building back better a tourism industry that’s inclusive, resilient, and prosperous.”
Mr Akko expressed his profound gratitude to UNDP, saying their support came at the darkest moment in the tourism industry’s recent history compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic impacts.
Key among the initiatives Tato undertook under the UNDP support in 2021 was hiring a US-based Cornersun Destination Marketing Company to promote Tanzania across the Northern America in its bid to revive the tourism industry, spur other businesses, recover thousands of lost jobs and generate revenue for the economy.
Tato also developed basic health infrastructure in key tourism spots, which entailed having, among other things, four ambulances, and agreement with some hospitals to use the facilities for tourists’ services in case of any contingency, and linkage with flying doctors’ services in its bid to restore tourist’s confidence.
To be precisely, Tato under the UNDP auspices deployed state-of-the-art fleet of ambulances to tourism hotbed areas, namely Serengeti and Kilimanjaro national parks, Tarangire-Manyara ecosystem and Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Through the UNDP funds, Tato also purchased the much-needed Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to protect tourists and those who serve them against the Covid-19 disease.
Tato in collaboration with the government has pioneered rollout of Seronera, Kogatende and Ndutu Coronavirus specimen collection centres in central, northern and eastern-south Serengeti, respectively, making Covid-19 testing easy and convenient for tourists.
Tato also was the first organisation to setup a vaccination centre at its premises for its frontline workers to receive the jabs, thus easing a plight of queuing at public hospitals. For the first time in the country’s history, Tato had successfully organised the Travel Agents FAM trip enabling the international travel agents in September 2021 to come and explore the northern tourism circuit.
The Tato efforts at the height of Covid-19 pandemic when the entire world came to a standstill was like wastage of time and other resources to most biblical ‘doubting Thomases.’
But the efforts apparently augured well for the international travellers, if the African Travel and Tourism Association’s (ATTA) statement is anything to go by.
“Our members and their clients travelling to Tanzania have received well the Covid-19 testing centres in Serengeti,” writes the ATTA CEO, Mr Chris Mears, to his Tato counterpart, Mr Sirili Akko.
ATTA is a member-driven trade association that promotes tourism to Africa from all corners of the world. Recognised as the voice of African tourism, ATTA supports industry in Africa, representing buyers and suppliers of tourism products in 21 African countries.
Mr Mears said the Serengeti testing centre impressed his members and tourists, as it allowed travelers to maximise their time in the parks and prevented them from using their long-programmed safari days for Covid-19 tests.
Here, key tour operators said the Tato initiatives have started invigorating fresh bookings.
“We’ve been registering a surge of new bookings with prospective tourists citing the Covid-19 specimen collection centre at Serengeti and the rollout of vaccination, as the factors behind booking safaris,” said the Nature Responsible Safaris MD, Ms Fransica Masika. explaining:
“We’re so grateful, indeed, to the painstaking efforts Tato spearheads along with the government through the UNDP financial support. We appreciate their urgent measures for supporting the industry’s recovery in the face of the Covid-19 crisis.”
The outbreak of the brutal Coronavirus led to a sharp fall in tourism arrivals in Tanzania from slightly over 1.5 million tourists in 2019 to 620,867 in 2020.
The fall in arrivals triggered an even more devastating drop in revenue collections to $1.7 billion in 2020, down from an all-time record of $ 2.6 billion in 2019.
With an 81 percent drop in tourism due to Covid-19 pandemic, many businesses collapsed resulting in significant revenue loss, a loss of three-quarters of jobs in the industry, be they tour operators, hotels, tour guides, transporters, food suppliers, and traders.
This severely affected the livelihoods of many, especially the micro, small and medium enterprises, unprotected workers, and informal businesses that comprise mostly youth and women.
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