The Uganda tourism industry is performing poorly- Prime Uganda Safaris & Tours Safari updates
Uganda safaris
are greatly affected due to the poor performance of the tourism
industry this year. The stakeholders are airing out problems like
constant strikes, demonstrations, riots that cause negative publicity
and bring about some clients deciding to postpone while others decide to
cancel the trips to Uganda
Herbert
Byaruhanga who is the President of Uganda Tourism Association said that
also they had high expectation of reaping from the fact that Kenya was
going through scary moments which were during the Kenya elections period
that were held in March, Uganda was not able to achieve that because of
the erratic demos that were going on in the country. This has affected
many Gorilla trekking safaris
since there are a number of tour operators who said they registered
cancellations from tourists who were scared of the negative images and
stories of protests on Kampala streets hence opting for other countries.
Tour visits to Uganda
will improve if the government comes in to stop such riots and
demonstrations as they strongly hurt the industry which highly
contributes to national revenue. It’s also noted that security is very
important for the prosperity of tourism business since the moment a
tourist gets to know of any slight confusion or insecurity in the
country, all they do is cancel the trips and book with other countries
with the same products.
In
August 2011, the tourism industry performance declined due to the ‘walk
to work’ demos but managed to pick up with an increase in the number of
tourists rising to 1.1 million tourists by December 2012. But the
industry had lost about 30% of their business in the demonstrations
which was hugely during their peak season so said Amos Wekesa, the then
UTA president an association that brings together all tourism
stakeholders like the tour operators, hotel owners, safari guides,
airlines and heritage sites owners, Community Tourism Associations, travel agents, tourist car hire companies and all the others.
All
the above mentioned bodies are hurt once the number of visitors reduces
for example the hotel owners alone lost about 70% of their business in
the 2011 demonstrations thus the reason it should not be allowed to
happen again for the good of both the industry and the government. Once
this is handled in the proper way, safaris to Uganda will certainly improve and increase at the same time.
Uganda Safaris/ Uganda Safari News
Prime Uganda Safaris & Tours updates 2013
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