Browsing: Serengeti

Tanzania's tourism industry | Serengeti National Park

When the first-ever, state-of-the-art tourism documentary featuring Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan and narrated by Peter Greenberg, the world’s best travel journalist, and award-winning investigative reporter, “The Royal Tour,” premiered in the US, it was only a matter of time before tourist numbers soared in Tanzania.
Whether it is the most beautiful places to visit in Tanzania or exotic landscapes found nowhere else, Tanzania offers one of the most unique tourism experiences in Africa and the world.…

Gran Melia Opens New Hotel in Tanzania. www.theexchange.africa

Similarly, as the country took internal measures to help the sector recover, the entire region, under the East African Community (EAC) moved to do the same. The EAC’s Sectoral Council on Tourism and Wildlife Management recently approved what it termed, the EAC Regional COVID-19 Tourism Recovery Plan.

Under this recovery plan, the EAC looks to work collectively towards the recovery of tourism in the region by supporting measures already adopted by individual countries in the bloc. A key agreement here was harmonization of guidelines to restore tourism and hospitality.

The Council approved the draft regional guidelines which are meant to build coherence in the measures that individual countries take to revive tourism. The Council insisted that if they work under the same guidelines then they will be able to earn trust and confidence of international tourists.…

Lions at the Serengeti National Park. Tanzania is not taking advantage of teh park's popularity to increase revenues. www.theexchange.africa

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For the third year in a row, Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park has been crowned the ‘Best National Park in Africa.’

Impressive and commendable, but is Tanzania capitalizing on this accreditation?

The World Travel Awards (WTA) have recognized ‘the cradle of mankind’ as Africa’s top tourist destination. Tanzania, as a country, was voted the top tourist destination. To put it in WTA’s words; “Tanzania – with its national parks, wildlife and palm-fringed beaches – was voted Africa’s Leading Destination…”

Such accolades should translate to having tourists visiting the park increase every year compared to other national parks on the continent and by default, it should equally mean pocketing much more tourism revenues.

That is however not the case. If we leave out Egypt which, despite being on the continent is actually considered a Middle Eastern region per the United Nation’s World Tourism Organization, the crown for receiving the largest number of …

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What is Tanzania without the Serengeti?  One cannot mention Tanzania’s beauty without alluding to the amazing landscapes of Mikumi or the exhilarating hiking experience of the Kilimanjaro.  All these make up the tourism packet—perhaps one of the greatest in Africa— that Tanzania has in its economic arsenal. 

Tourism is Tanzania’s notable primary foreign exchange earner, which brought in more than $2.4 billion in 2018, an increase of 9.1 per cent that time—from $2.2 billion in 2017 (Tanzania Invest). 

On the other side, last year forex earnings dropped to a 10-year low during the year ending October 2020, contributed by the travel restrictions as a response towards curbing COVID-19 infections. Tanzania saw only $1.2 billion in its forex compared to $2.5 marked in the year ending October 2019, according to information from The Citizen. 

In its pursuit of tourism glory, Tanzania has not been alone. Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda are right

serengeti Tanzania largest migration

 

The Serengeti, home to the largest annual migration of over 1.5 million wildebeest and zebras making it your never-miss animal show on Discovery Channel, is in peril. For more than a decade now, human activity has interfered with the ‘cradle of mankind.’

This ‘Eden’ so to speak, is home to Olduvai Gorge where the oldest human fossil nicknamed ‘Lucy’ was found. The site remains an invaluable asset in furthering understanding of early human evolution and is believed to have been traversed by our upright walking ancestors, the Homo Erectus.

What our two million years old ancestors must have seen every year starting early May, is the migration of millions of wildebeest and with them a host of predators—a spectacle known affectionately as ‘The greatest Show On Earth’ that we awe at to date. It is for this reason that we owe it to our children and future generations 

serengeti simba lodge trip advisor

The Kilimanjaro mountain scape, Serengeti fascinating landscape, the Ngorongoro conservation magical experience and the spice island exuberant moments in Zanzibar are just a few joyous tourist experiences, one can acquire in real-time when visiting Tanzania.

Nevertheless, this magnificent reality is a product of hard labour and constant update of policies, laws and modus operandi of the tourism industry in Tanzania.

However, over the past couple of years, the competition has spiced up pretty hard and other players are coming into the fold, naming two: Rwanda with its stunning hills scenery—investing millions of dollars to brand their industry (Visit Rwanda) and Uganda’s game viewing.

To say the least, Tanzania has competitors across the East African Community, and it is great—in the name of developing healthy economic pillars, which are driven by sustainable mechanisms to preserve natural resources and unify our regional economies.

The Tanzanian tourism sector contributes nearly 17.5 per cent …

Serengeti National park Tanzania

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is stealing the life out of the billion-dollar tourism industry in Tanzania, the government has already laid out a warning that at about 477,000 jobs could be lost, while revenue will shrink by 77 per cent if the virus outbreak endures hurting people past October this year.

According to the Tanzanian ministry of tourism, the number of tourists arriving in Tanzania rose from 1.3 million in 2017 to 1.5 million in 2018, whereas this increment made the sector to garner $2.4 billion (7.2 per cent increase) compared to 2.3 billion in 2017.

This means that the forex earning sector could collapse as the virus outbreak takes various dynamics over time and space in Tanzania, thus currently health authorities reports indicated 480 people have contracted the virus and 16 people succumbed by the virus.

Tanzania is one of Africa’s leading tourism markets, with exotic landscapes of the …