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TTB plans marketing missions to 18 countries
2007-09-14 08:36:44
By Beatrice Philemon
The Tanzania Tourist Board (TTB) plans to undertake marketing and promotion of local attractions by attending 18 international tourism fairs in different parts of the world.
The TTB`s Director of Marketing Amant Macha told The Guardian yesterday that the countries included Russia, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Canada, London, Australia, Barcelona, China, The Netherlands, USA and Spain.
Others included Belgium, Italy, Germany, Sweden and South Africa.
He said tourism was an important industry in many developing countries and that it had become an important sector potentially constituting one of the fastest growing areas.
He said it was currently among the top five sources of foreign currency for 83 per cent of developing countries.
`As TTB we have decided to embark on such programme after observing that Tanzania is endowed with some of the world’s most amazing tourist attractions that can help to bring sustainable development if promoted,` he said.
He added: `It can also offers opportunities in terms of providing foreign exchange, public revenues, employment creation and income generation to the vulnerable groups such as women, to reduce poverty,` said Macha.
Macha said Tanzania is endowed with a myriad of tourist attractions scattered in different parts of the country.
Elaborating on the tourism industry he said the growth in tourist arrivals had been also attributed to `Tanzania Authentic Africa` campaign launched in 2002 as well as a number of other initiatives in place, especially in up-grading tourist infrastructure like roads and airport, communication network, refurbishing of hotels and tourist vehicles.
`These along with a combination of other factors such as safety and health environment led to a significant growth in 2005,` he said.
Tanzania received close to 800,000 tourists in 2005 pushing up the country’s earnings. It targets to increase the arrivals figure to 1 million by the year 2010.
Aviation was also key to the increasing tourism levels in the country and the increased number of flights by almost all airlines flying to Tanzania and within eased accessibility and brought more tourists, he said.
`For example, KLM and Ethiopian Airlines have daily flights to KIA and DIA while Kenya Airways has four daily flights between Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, British Airways, Swiss International and Air India have an average of four flights a week to Dar es Salaam,` he said.
Emirates also increased its frequencies to daily with four direct flights between Dubai and Dar es Salaam, while three flights would also touch Nairobi.
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