Tourism

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In tourism ‘minor’ issues matter too

Posted: Sunday July 13, 2008 6:42 PM BT

Their 2008/09 budget estimates having sailed through the National Assembly, Natural Resources and Tourism minister Shamsa Mwangunga and her entire crew must be heaving a huge sigh of relief. Very justifiably so, right?

As House Deputy Speaker Anne Makinda is so fond of saying, persuading MPs into endorsing ministerial budget estimates is no mean feat especially when a minister has been in office for less than six months.

Should things go to plan, Tanzania will be attracting a lot more local and foreign tourists in the next three to four years than is now the case. There will also be a corresponding rise in revenue earned from the tourist arrivals.

An upbeat minister Mwangunga says much of the success would be thanks to promotional drives to be implemented by the government with support from a line-up of other institutions.

It is almost as much a clich to say that Tanzania is the land of the Kilimanjaro, the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater and a generally world-renowned tourist destination.

Yet, given the sophisticated nature of present-day realities, the country has no option but to continue to market itself.

In the circumstances, one can only wish the government and all other genuine stakeholders the best of luck as they wage individual and joint wars aimed at making our country's tourism industry tick all the more.

But the implementation of ambitious drives or plans of the kind the ministry has in mind is usually fraught with dangers.

One such danger is that the people or institutions involved can easily begin thinking so big that they fail to take into account issues or aspects that appear too incidental to make a difference but which can sabotage even the most grandiose of strategies.

Tabling her ministry's budget estimates, minister Mwangunga elaborated on the headway she said the government had made in 'selling' Tanzania to the world.

As expected, she commented on the efforts made in making the outside world disabuse itself of the belief that the likes of Africa's highest peak, the Serengeti and Ngorongoro do not stand on Tanzanian soil.

All well and good. However, numerous instances show that there would have been less need for such costly publicity had we been keener in our promotional drives by attending to some 'minor' details right in our own backyards perhaps even before we went global.

One such instance relates to signposts on the road traversing Mikumi National Park, all of them in Kiswahili when warning against littering the park (Usitupe taka hifadhini) and all in English when notifying anyone caring to read them that there is a lodge or site camp nearby.

All those going around or through our national parks, and indeed all of us, are obliged to keep these treasures spick and span.

Strangely, the authorities concerned appear bent on believing that only people who can read Kiswahili instructions have reason to care about this crucial responsibility.

This is a 'minor' anomaly that will have cost us dearly. It has no business costing us a cent more.

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