PERMANENT Secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism, Prof Adolf Mkenda, has stressed a need for regional authorities to organise tourism fairs and investment forums in their areas to market tourist attractions.
He said the move would help attract more foreign and local tourists and increase government revenue.
Speaking in Mwanza to regional administrative secretaries (RAS) from the Lake Zone and Kigoma Region recently, the PS urged regional leaders to ensure they organised trade fairs in Mwanza City in the near future as agreed early December this year.
Prof Mkenda said tourism contributed considerably to government revenue through national parks, game reserves and forest reserves which were also available in Lake Zone and Kigoma Region.
He said currently 80 per cent of tourists visited the northern part of the country which was endowed with various tourist attractions such as Mount Meru and Kilimanjaro and national parks such as Serengeti, Manyara and Tarangire which were well-known because they had been marketed for a long time.
He noted that the Lake Zone and Kigoma Region could make good tourism attractions since there were endowed with a number of natural attractions such as national parks and forest reserves such as Sanane Island, Ibanda, Kyerwa, Burigi Chato, Lubondo, Lake Victoria and Kijereshi Forest Reserve which had a variety of wild animals, birds, snakes, crocodiles and other attractive biodiversity.
“Since infrastructure has been improved such as Mwanza Airport and in other areas what is needed is to market tourist attractions to attract both foreign and local tourists,” Prof Mkenda said.
He noted that for the country to benefit more from the sector there was a need for marketing new tourist attractions the Lake Zone being one of them.
Mwanza Region Administrative Secretary Christopher Kadia who was chairing the meeting said the meeting aimed at discussing various ways through which they could promote tourism in their areas and make the sector contribute greatly to the government.
He said what was supposed to be done was to open new tourism opportunities by embarking on an extensive campaign to market tourist sites through tourism fairs and investment forums.
A tourist officer, Mr Wilfred Msemo, said their plan was to hold a tourism fair and investment forum in the Lake Zone and Kigoma Region as it would attract and widen the tourism sector in the country by attracting more investments.
