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Tourism: Fastest way to boost economy
2005-11-18 07:13:45
By Prosper Makene
Ngurdoto Mountain Lodge, situated between Arusha and Moshi towns, has plans to construct a tourism college to offer university degrees on tourism in an effort to boost tourism in the country a bigger push.
Mr Mugambi says that they embarked on the plans after realising that knowledge on tourism is still at a very low level.
’We saw the need to give it a boost by introducing an international tourism college that will offer degrees to its graduands,’ he said.
The general manager says the tourism college will assist Tanzanians in the tourism sector in order to work efficiently not only in Tanzania but also across the boarders of the country.
Mugambi underscores that the college will also be teaching different international languages in order to provide a wider limelight to hoteliers who will be working with international hotels since this will enable them to communicate fully with the tourists coming from different countries.
The languages to be taught at the college are English, Spanish, German, Italian, Greek and Arabic.
He also urged the government to assist Ngurdoto Mountain Lodge in building the road from the Moshi-Arusha junction to where the lodge is situated.
’This will also help to facilitate easy movement on the part of the hotel but will also help in raising the number of tourists and hence raise government revenue,’ he said.
Building of Ngurdoto Mountain Lodge started in 1999 and was completed in 2004.
It stands within lush Arabica coffee plantations spread over 140 acres with natural streams traversing and flowing from Mount Meru.
It is nested between Mt Meru and the beautiful-snow capped Mount Kilimanjaro, approximately 27km from Arusha city and almost the same distance from Kilimanjaro International Airport (JRO).
The access road from the Arusha/Kilimanjaro road to Ngurdoto Mountain Lodge is around 3km.
The lodge has displayed an international touch even in employment for it has four expatriate managers and three professional local Tanzanian managers.
With regards to challenges he said, ’there have been some challenges in the past and these include the need for more rooms. We need to increase our rooms from 132 to 200 or more.’
Though there are great achievements since the lodge started, the aspect of training our people is still as important as our guests are to us.
In order to strengthen the tourism industry in the country, Mugambi said, ”we need government support, through the ministries of tourism, energy and natural resources, sports culture and youth development to extend good relations to us in terms of sponsorships and team work…
This should include provision and opportunities for Tanzanians to run or own tourist sites, lodges, resorts and hotels for social and economic prosperity of the country.
Tourism is vital for the development of Tanzania because it is a global phenomenon and is among the significantly fastest modes of development for many countries.
According to the information revealed by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism, tourism increased from 259.44 US $ Million to 746.02 US $ M between 1995 and 2004.
The sector directly accounted for 16 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and nearly 25 percent of total export earnings.
It also indicated that in 2002 Tanzania had 465 hotels which were increased to 476 hotels in the year 2004 and this has said to be the slight change compared to increased of tourists arrivals.
Arrivals have also increased from 575,000 in 2002 to 582,807 in 2004.
Tourism is reported to have created about 200,000 direct and indirect employment opportunities in the country.
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