Africa-Press – Tanzania. ZANZIBAR has started rebranding itself to survive the competitive tourism markets, with a new focus on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries.
Tourism stakeholders have principally agreed that Zanzibar needs her own identity for triumphant marketing with the Zanzibar Commission for Tourism (ZCT) specifically saying it is already devising marketing guidelines for all stakeholders.
“We want to come up with our own identity, which we will use to market Zanzibar as the tourism destination of choice,” ZCT Marketing Director Hafsa Mbamba told a one-day public-private dialogue on tourism related issues in Unguja over the weekend.
She said the six-country GCC region—United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain—have huge tourism potential for Zanzibar. “The GCC region can bring us many and high spending tourists,” she said.
Zanzibar National Chamber of Commerce (ZNCC) Executive Director, Mr Hamad Hamad approved the idea for the country’s identity as the most effective marketing tool for Zanzibar, which he said is endowed with enormous cultural wealth.
“Our identity is our tourism; let’s stand firm with one voice as we market our destination,” Mr Hamad said, proposing introduction of Islamic tourism packages to supplement the marketing efforts. He said marketing Zanzibar as a beach destination alone is insufficient to win tourists.
UN Development Programme (UNDP) Area Coordinator, Zanzibar, Ms Dorothy Temu-Usiri said it was high time Zanzibar moved from rhetoric to operationalisation of the rebranding project.
“We have talked enough about rebranding, let’s move to the operationalisation,” she told the gathering.
She further proposed integration of the local markets to encourage islanders to consume domestically produced products, warning that the exports of local products and imports of domestically consumed goods is risky for the country. Ms Usiri was reacting to a statement by Association of Fruit and Vegetable Farmers in Zanzibar—UWAMWIMA—on plans to start exporting its farm produce to Saudi Arabia due to lack of reliable domestic market.
“There is a huge domestic market for our products; only that we haven’t integrated it…it’s only through consumption of our own products that we can create jobs for ourselves and future generations,” said the UNDP representative.
Unguja-based Lawyer, Mr Slim Said Abdallah warned against the indiscriminate exports of fruits and vegetables, saying it might subject the country to unnecessary crisis.
“If we are not carefully, the exports might end up drying our domestic markets of essential products,” he cautioned.
Hotel Association Zanzibar (HAZ) Chief Executive Officer, Mr Wilfred Shirima, decried the devastating impacts of Covid-19 on especially the hospitality industry, calling for stakeholders to execute the pandemic recovery measures to attract visitors. He underscored the need for strict adherence to Covid-19 protocols, saying: “We cannot avoid Covid-19; the best way is to adopt strategies to co-exist with the pandemic.” The chief executive of hoteliers pushed for vaccination, especially for front liners in the hospitality industry, saying HAZ is on a door-to-door jab drive.
“We are going to each hotel to inform workers and encourage voluntary vaccination,” he said.
Under the UNDP financial support, ZNCC and ZCT had co-orgnised the dialogue to provide stakeholders with a platform to deliberate on key issues that haunt the tourism sector.
