News
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Use the tourism promotion plan
Terrorism is attempting to wreak havoc on East Africa’s tourism earnings. This is not great news to our coffers because for a long time, Tourism has been ahead of agriculture or industry in all the five East African Community countries as the highest income earner as seen by the latest statistics obtained from the CIA World Factbook.
Current travel advisories from the USA, Britain, Canada and Australia are asking their citizens to exercise a high degree of caution whilst traveling to East Africa and particularly to the coastal areas, which is the biggest tourist magnate to the region. This is due to the perceived threat due to the recent attacks by gunmen.This and other media reports paint a bad picture and usually discourage travelers.
However, it has also been proven through research that armed attacks like this are usually not the top on the travelers list for caution. On top of this list is illness or disease, followed by accidents, then followed by natural disasters and finally on to terrorism, crime and theft in that order.
This explains why Brazil, India and South Africa, where crime is higher than anywhere in East Africa, still receive far more visitors than the EAC. However, this is not the entire picture. The fuller picture is painted when you look at the amount of money spent in publicity by these countries.
It is no secret that for example Sri Lanka, which spends less on promotion receives less travelers than, say, India, yet you would imagine that due to the negative press on India, there would be less travelers to that country.
The immediate reaction of our leaders is to point fingers and lay blame, but this is not going to help at all, as it only makes things worse.
The best way to go is the way of promotion. Tourism has traditionally been poorly promoted in countries like Burundi and Uganda. Even Tanzania is just beginning to awake to the potential inherent in tourism promotion.
It is common knowledge that the average western tourist may not be able to tell the difference between the Gambia and, say, Togo. Even the average African will not know this! Most of the western media is of no help either. Only last month, a Nightly News anchor from the NBC, a US television network, made the mistake of saying the Boko Haram were in Kenya.
It is thus the duty of our own government, through an extensive use of the media to go about vigorously promoting our countries and our tourism potential. We have to paint the picture of the beauty of our countries, the warmth of the people, the perfectness of the weather, the sweetness of the food and the relative safety of the travelers.
For long, the western media has driven the agenda on our own income earnings through tourism. It is time the EAC governments started to take the shaping of our destiny in our own hands. It is up to us to shape produce what we want other people to think of us, not some stranger who does not know where Bujumbura is. This way, we shall have the initiative that can drive our economies to greater heights.
By Editor, Saturday, June 21st, 2014