The Citizen (Dar es Salaam)
Alawi Masare
11 May 2011
Tourism is Tanzania’s second-biggest foreign-exchange earner, after gold mining, yet the country invests just Sh3 billion in promoting itself to sightseers.Tanzania earned $1.291 billion (about Sh1.807trillion) from travel activities during the year to February 2011, just $303 million (about Sh424 billion) behind gold, according to Bank of Tanzania figures.
Tourism promoters say the little budget on a sector, which also generates about 17 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product, thwarts efforts to efficiently promote it, a situation that benefits competitors.
Kenya and South Africa – some of the country’s major competitors in tourism – inject four times and 20 times more than Tanzania, respectively, into tourism promotion.
“There has been a small increase in the budget, with which we are required to meet numerous desires….it is difficult for us to compete with our major competitors in the region,” The Tanzania Tourist Board managing director, Dr Aloyce Nzuki told The Citizen’s Business Week in an interview.
Clear on its Quality Tourism approach, which wants the country to attract a few high-spending tourists, Tanzania projects to receive one million tourists in 2012 even as low budget forces it (the country) resort to advertising in cheaper avenues instead of some expensive avenues which may yield quick gains.
“We have spent Sh1 billion to advertise on English Premier League alone so you can see how expensive it is… It is basing on that fact that our strategy has remained below the line promotion which involves publications and organising tours for foreign journalists so that when they go back to their home countries, they can write about tourism in Tanzania,” says Dr Nzuki.
Other tourism stakeholders share Dr Nzuki’s sentiments, advising the government to arrive at a budget for tourism promotion basing on earnings from the sector.
“It is high time the destination marketing budget was calculated at 25 per cent of the country’s total tourism receipts,” the chairman of the Tanzania Association of Tour Operators (TATO) Mr Leopold Kabendera said at the tourism stakeholders’ meeting earlier in March this year.
Poor Infrastructure
The tourism fraternity believes that apart from the minute promotional budget, the country’s tourism is also riddled by poor infrastructure and an unfriendly taxation regime.”We also need to deal with supporting infrastructures…..Some of our airports still have poor facilities whereby some airport runways (like Dodoma) can be useful only during daytime due to lack of lights…..seasonal roads and power shortages make tourists feel uncomfortable and erodes the competitiveness of the destination,” said Dr Nzuki.
Unfriendly tax regime
According to the chief executive officer for Precision Air, Mr Alfonse Kioko, making the country attractive to tourists needs more than just warm and peaceful people plus safe and secure destination. “Issues like cost-effective and reliable transport, for both air and land, need to be considered,” he said at the March stakeholders’ consultative meeting.
Available data indicate that with high tax rates, aviation fuel prices are 30 per cent more expensive in Tanzania than they are in Kenya and Uganda, a situation that make air transport more expensive in the country than they are in the other two East African Community member states.
The director of Tanzania Air Services Limited, Mr Abdulkadir Mohamed said in Dar es Salaam recently that time is ripe Tanzania removed Value Added Tax (VAT) on air passengers like it (the country) does with passengers on other modes of transport.
“Tourists do not pay VAT….it is unfortunate that in Tanzania, internal tourists do pay whenever they fly. It is very difficult to explain to the revenue authority (TRA) that these people are tourists though they are Tanzanians,” Mr Mohamed said recently in Dar es Salaam at a breakfast meeting organised by Tanzania Private Sector Foundation.
According to him, only tourists are exempted from paying the 18 per cent VAT whenever they fly.
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Tiny Promotional Budget Strangles Tourism