According to the Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Tourism, Mr Lazaro Nyalandu, Tanzania forecasts to attract 1.6 million tourists by 2015, double of the current figure of 800,000 visitors per year.
Tanzania is striving to increase the number of tourists to the country when the United Nation World Tourism Organization forecasts a 50% growth in Africa’s tourists arrivals over the next nine years – a massive increase from the current 50 million visitors.
Tanzania’s main tourist attractions are represented by the country’s abundant natural resources and wildlife with its 16 National Parks, the Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain, the Ngorongoro Crater the world’s only wildlife packed Volcanic Cratre and the spicy island of Zanibar to name the most famous.
At the opening of the first “Pan-African Conference on Sustainable Tourism Management in National Parks and Protected Areas,” taking place in Arusha, Tanzania, from the 15th to the 18rh October 2012 Vice-President Dr Mohamed Gharib Bilal called for collective efforts in conserving and protecting local natural resources and wildlife.
Dr Bilal pointed out that it was time for all parties to team up and jointly work to attain the goal pointing out that “”In the last three decades Tanzania experienced increased environmental destruction on both land and water resources with poaching for wildlife products becoming rampant until the government moved in to arrest the situation”.
