Tanzania Tourism Boosted by Television Ad Campaign

The Tanzania tourism sector is currently being promoted through a television advertisement campaign that entered into its second phase at the end of September in New York and has since been heralded as a success by the Tanzania Minister for Tourism and Natural Resources, Shamsa Mwangunga.

Recently, Tanzania has been increasingly promoted as an attractive tourist destination through media outlets in America, Europe and Asia as a result of enhanced Government efforts to develop the tourism sector within the country.

In addition, promoters of the tourism sector in Tanzania have actively been networking and distributing brochures at exhibitions throughout the US, Great Britain, Italy, Germany, India, Korea, Japan and Russia.

“Many tourists from Europe, Asia and America have been confusing Tanzania with our neighboring countries,” said Ms. Mwangunga, “but from the advertising we are running, more than 152 million people understand where Mt. Kilimanjaro, the Serengeti and Zanzibar are.”

The second phase of this campaign has been labeled, ‘Tanzania: the land of Kilimanjaro, Zanzibar and the Serengeti,’ and was officially launched in New York through paid commercial advertisements shown on the television station CNN.

Currently, the television stations running advertisements which promote some of the tourist attractions in Tanzania include: CNN America, CNN International and ABC News, all of which have a solid media presence in America.

According to Ms. Mwangunga, prior to the launch of the campaign, the primary source of tourism revenues in Tanzania came from incoming US tourists.

“For the first time, visitors from the US reached a record high of 68,379,” said Ms. Mwangunga said in a statement.

In addition, Ms. Mwangunga said that, because this increase in American tourists was an unprecedented event, she was hopeful that the campaign would help to further promote the country as an attractive destination for future tourists and would bring about improvements to the sector in order to make future investments into the country’s infrastructure and hotel industries more possible.

Prior to the launch of the American campaign, revenues from incoming US visitors to the country had been projected to increase from the recorded USD 1.2 billion in previous years, to USD 1.35 billion by next year.

Currently, earnings from the tourism sector account for 17% of the overall GDP of Tanzania, represented by approximately USD 1.4 billion in tourist arrivals from last year.

According to Ms. Mwangunga, in a statement made to journalists last week in Dar es Salaam, since the campaign began, not only has the amount of tourists coming to Tanzania increased, but so have the overall receipts from the sector.

Therefor, in order for the performance of the sector to continue to do well, the Government of Tanzania has agreed to support improvements to the infrastructure of the country’s many national parks and also to introduce and to promote both beach and cultural tourism.