The Tanzania National Parks Authority (TANAPA) has recently launched a marketing campaign focused on the coastal city of Tanga, in the northeast Tanzania, to boost the domestic tourism in the region.
The marketing campaign, set for a period of six months, was launched in an official event in Tanga city by the TANAPA’s Acting Marketing Manager Victor Katensi.
Tanga’s marketing campaign is meant to boost the number of local visitors to the Mkomazi and Saadani National Parks, which together represent a total protected area of 4,345 square kilometers and an average of 12,220 local visitors per annum.
Among the activities to be taken in the region to promote tourism, Mr. Katensi explained that road shows and sales drives will take place in the city for ten days.
Tanga’s promotion is part of an overall marketing campaign announced by TANAPA’s Director of Tourism and Marketing Mr. Ibrahim Mussa during the last Dar es Salaam International Trade Fair (DITF) in June, which aims to change Tanzania tourism’s image with locals due to the great impact that it has on the economy.
According to TANAPA latest available statistics for 2012/13, domestic tourism represents more than 40% of the total visitors to national parks with 364,217 arrivals which is expected to reach the 450,000 by the end of the campaign.
According to the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), the domestic travel spending represents 30.2% of the direct contribution of Travel & Tourism to Tanzanian Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which was TZS 2,492 billion or 4.67% of the GDP in the year 2014.
The domestic travel spending allowed the creation of 386,400 job positions in the year 2014, a 3.65% of the total employment created in Tanzania, and with an expected growth in domestic spending of 7.2% through the year 2014, it is meant to raise the creation of job positions to 500,000 to the same year.
