Tanzania woos tourists to FIFA SA World Cup

Natural Resources and Tourism minister Shamsa Mwangunga has invited more foreign tourists to tour Tanzania in the forthcoming FIFA Football World Cup matches to view the new Seventh World Wonder and experience the country’s warm hospitality.

She revealed this at the just-ended International Tourism Fair (ITB) held in Berlin, Germany from March 10 to14, this year.

She said that the event would bring in more than three million travellers worldwide to Africa, adding that many of these would visit Tanzania.

Although we encourage them to visit our country, last year the tourism sector in Tanzania was declared the leading economic sector contributing to the GDP.

“This position had been held by agriculture for many years, while in 2008, the number of international tourist arrivals to Tanzania stood at 770,000 from 720,000 tourists recorded in 2007,” she noted.

She said the total tourist revenue also increased from USD1.037bn in 2007 to USD1.270bn in 2008.

Also during this period, the number of German tourists to Tanzania maintained significant increase having reached 29,000 tourists against 58,240 British tourists.

“Our target is to welcome 1 million tourists by 2012, who will expectedly generate USD1.5bn to the economy,” she said.

In order to reach this target, the government was undertaking several steps to increase hotel accommodation, improve infrastructure around the country and increasing marketing promotion campaigns overseas.

She said that Tanzania was out to build a strong posture internationally as key transformations were happening across the political and economic spectra.

Tanzania's current strength is based in abundant natural resources including wildlife, beautiful beaches along the ocean and lakes, favourable climate, history and culture as well as its warm and friendly people, who speak Kiswahili.

“With a new wave of tourism developments and promotion, Tanzania expects to assume a higher rank in the list of African tourist destinations in the next five years.” she revealed.

Tanzania is the largest country in East Africa with 28 per cent of its land set aside for conservation—boasts 16 national parks and 34 game reserves, and is the home to Kilimanjaro, the tallest free-standing mountain in the world, world’s renowned Serengeti plains and now acknowledged as the new Seventh Wonder of the World where the Olduvai Gorge known as the Cradle of Mankind is located. Besides, there are dozens of other tourist luring areas including Zanzibar