Tourism figures slump 9%

Apr 23, 2006

UGANDA’S overall tourism arrivals fell by 8.7% last year due to a sharp reduction in visitors from Kenya and Tanzania but tourism officials are upbeat the 2006 prospects indicate the country will pull in more visitors.

By Sylvia Juuko

UGANDA’S overall tourism arrivals fell by 8.7% last year due to a sharp reduction in visitors from Kenya and Tanzania but tourism officials are upbeat the 2006 prospects indicate the country will pull in more visitors.

Statistics released by Uganda Bureau of Statistics last month show 467,700 visitors arrived during 2005 compared to 512,378 in 2004.

“Despite the drop in overall arrivals, the industry is reporting a great year, meaning that the mix of visitors is progressively tending towards leisure.
“We owe this to good marketing and the travel trade which has improved the quantity and quality of services in the different segments,” James Bahinguza, Tourism Uganda’s general manager, said.
Kenya, which contributed 220,000 visitors to inbound traffic during 2004, brought in only 138,346 visitors last year, while arrivals from Tanzania fell by 22% to 50,723.
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The Uganda gifted by nature campaign launched on CNN last year and the high profile visits from actors and travel journalists are expected to bring in more numbers this year.

Tourism officials however say that key source markets like UK and USA posted improved performance with a 26% and 16% growth in tourists arriving from these markets respectively.
Tourists from South Africa grew by 9.6% over the previous year to 10,423 arrivals while 4,972 visitors were recorded from Germany. Figures show that more Rwandans visited Uganda rising 80,522 last year from 66,298 in 2004.

The boost in arrival from key markets has been attributed to the resumption of direct services between Entebbe and Amsterdam, by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines in the last quarter of 2005.

Other airlines like Emirates and Kenya Airways which have daily flights to Entebbe, also contributed through expansions in their global route networks.

According to the newsletter, PR agencies recruited last early 2005 have organized targeted familiarisation trips for journalists from the UK and the US making the country feature in key travel sections of newspapers.

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