Tourism stakeholders excited about reopening airport

Sep 22, 2020

The reopening of the airport and land borders to tourists has caused excitement among tourism stakeholders, giving hope to many who had started refunding booking fees.

The tourism sector came to a standstill in March after President Yoweri Museveni announced the closure of all borders, together with Entebbe Airport, as one of the ways of curbing the spread of COVID-19.

The measures meant that all tourist sites had to be shut to the public. However, in his address on Sunday, President Museveni eased the restrictions on airports.

"The international airport and land borders will now be opened for tourists coming in and going out, provided the tour operators ensure that the tourists do not mix with Ugandans. The tourists will be driven straight from the airport to their destinations or to designated transit hotels that are set aside for that purpose," he said.

Speaking to New Vision, Steven Masaba, Uganda Wildlife Authority's director of tourism and business development, said the reopening of airports is an important announcement because the animals have also been missing visitors.

"We have been hit hard during this lockdown. The opening of airports implies that we are going to start earning money again. The news has come at the right time because our biggest tourist attractions — mountain gorillas and chimpanzees — have multiplied in the last two months. We have also discovered new sights that will excite our visitors," Masaba said.

Masaba added that they have been monitoring the parks and have managed to control illegal activities, which is why the animals are in good shape.

Uganda earned $1.6b (about shs5.8 trillion) from tourism in the 2018/2019 financial year, making the sector the country's leading foreign exchange earner for the fifth year in a row.

An investor in hospitality, Amos Wekesa, the chief executive officer of Great Lakes Safari and Uganda Lodge, said opening airports has been long overdue because some of them had started refunding booking fees to some of the international visitors who had made bookings before the lockdown.

"It is exciting to have the airport reopen, but the bad thing is Uganda has not marketed herself during the lockdown the way other countries did. We need to have new marketing strategies to have the visitors back because tourism does not only benefit Ugandans but the wholesalers in Europe as well," Wekesa said.

Lilly Ajarova, the executive director of Uganda Tourism Board, said though she is happy regarding the reopening of the airport, it is going to take time to get the number of visitors the country was receiving before the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We are happy about the reopening of airports, but we should not forget that there are airlines that are still grounded. We are calling on Ugandans to take advantage of this time to travel and enjoy our beautiful country. They will have great experience and be in a better position to market Uganda," Ajarova said.

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