Starting Tuesday, Uganda is set to revamp her tourism sector that earlier suffered months of shrinkage with a live-streamed, virtual safari.
The virtual tour will feature six videographers and photographers traversing across the country. It has been promoted by the Ugandan government to re attract tourists to the pearl after many parts of the world have hardly emerged from travel restrictions and lockdowns caused by the Covid-19 Pandemic.
According to Paul Ninsiima, sales manager at Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), a state-owned conservation agency co-organizing the project, this project is going to be showcasing Uganda’s beauty. She further stated that they were very excited about this because Ugandans ought to appreciate what the country has.
The virtual tours come in days before the scheduled reopening of Uganda’s Entebbe international airport to commercial flights slated for October 1st.
In May, President Museveni announced that the country was set to lose $1.6 billion from the tourism sector since the airport had been shut from passenger flights and millions of tourists in the country are foreigners.
Uganda earned about Shs5. 8 trillion from tourism in the 2018/2019 financial year, making the sector the country’s leading foreign currency earner for the fifth year in a row, according to government data.
The number of tourists in 2019 reached 1,505,669 up from 1,402,409 in 2017. In the FY2018/19, the tourism sector accounted for 7.7 percent of the national GDP and 6.7 percent of total national employment after creating 667,600 jobs.
The UWA in June started offering complimentary prices to domestic tourists. At reduced prices, Ugandans and foreign residents are free to enter any park in the country provided they follow the set Standard Operating Procedures aimed at reducing the spread of COVID-19.
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