With a daily goal to improve on Uganda’s tourism sector, the Uganda tourism agencies are through various means seeking to boost the annual turnover of tourist numbers in Uganda.
With a relatively growing tourists figures per annum, Uganda has stepped up efforts to tap into the Chinese tourist market in pursuit to attain the goals at hand.
To effectively venture into the Chinese tour market, the Uganda Tourism Board (UTB), a government tourism body charged with the promotion of Uganda’s tourism both in Uganda and overseas, last year hired Chinese firm – PHG Consulting, a market destination representative to sell Uganda’s tourism in China.
The firm has been tasked to train local tour operators on how they can aid on attracting tourists from the Asian source market.
During the launch of the training in Kampala yesterday, The PHG Consulting China travel sales director, Ms Catherine Mei, commented that Uganda is a unique country that they want to promote in China as soon as possible and bring Chinese tourists in Uganda to enjoy the wildlife safaris and the authentic culture.
Also, speaking at the event, the UTB chairman, Mr Daudi Migereko, said that it was paramount for the Ugandan tour operators to train in order to understand the spending types and sequences, budgets and what really attracts Chinese.
“The Chinese tour in big numbers and spend more time whenever they visit compared to tourists from other countries. The more time they spend, the more money our country will earn from them. Our assignment is to grow the current number of visitors from 1.6 million. We believe tapping into the Chinese market will help us to increase the numbers,” he further commented on why they opted for the Chinese market.
The Ugandan government has in the past five years affianced with firms like KPR, Kamageo and now PHG Consulting-China to market the country, especially in Europe, North America, Germany and now China, Japan and United Arab Emirates.
Uganda Tourism Board CEO, Ms Lilly Ajarova revealed that, for Uganda to understand the Chinese market and be able to develop products that are of interest to the Chinese, Uganda Tourism Board is working collaboratively with PHG Consulting who are here to also train the private sector so as they are able to understand the needs of Chinese tourists. Foristance, Chinese have Kingdoms something that will be of great interest to them if we diversified.
Currently, the board is seeking for opportunities of working with cultural leaders to be able to develop the product that can actually meet needs of the Chinese as previously, the core markets have been Germany, North America and the United Kingdom who are mostly interested in nature and they are also inclined towards culture so it helps to diversify Uganda’s tourism and also provides more opportunities for both Investment and Tourism.
Previously, Uganda’s tourism marketing strategies have always been looped onto wildlife but Uganda Tourism is slowly diversifying this into Tourism and Culture as Culture is one of the latest product offerings currently developed.
The other key product being developed is called ‘’MICE’’ literally translated as Meeting, Incentive Conferences and Events as Uganda has the best conferencing facilities that visitors can utilize for international conferences among these include; Speke Resort Munyonyo, Lake Victoria Serena, Kampala Serena hotel and Conference centre which offer conferencing facilities for ‘’MICE’’ as destination Uganda tries to position itself Globally and to attract big players into the Country.
Previously, Uganda has invested a lot of money into marketing the tourism sector and at this point, Markets like China are potential targets for the country’s tourism earnings as Chinese travel in groups and spend not less days visiting the different attractions as they spend highly which increases the country’s tourism earnings.
Uganda Tourism Board stresses that in the next 3 -5 years, destination Uganda will be the major sector driving economic development.
Last week, Uganda won one of the biggest tourism awards at Indaba Tourism fair in South Africa something that created a lot of publicity about Uganda across the entire world as various publications emphasized their contents on the award, that alone drives a lot of traffic to Uganda as a major tourism destination on the International market and hence avails the opportunity of Investment into tourism.
In 2017, Uganda earned 1.3 million U.S dollars and 1.4 million tourists while in 2018, the country received 4 million U.S dollars and 1. 7 million tourists meaning an increment in both foreign earnings and tourist numbers and this is expected to grow by close of 2019.
Uganda earns about 1.5 billion U.S. dollars per annum from tourism and expects the figures to double by the year 2020.
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