The Tanzania Tourist Board (TTB) has embarked on an innovative strategy to help grow domestic tourism and attract more local tourists to the country’s numerous tourism destinations by encouraging and promoting live musical performances and education.
In order to achieve this objective, the TTB has expressed the need for both the public and the private sectors within the Tanzania tourism industry to work together in a joint effort to market the product and to strengthen tourism services overall.
According to Geoffrey Tengeneza, the Senior Public Information Officer for the TTB, who recently spoke with The Guardian Tanzania, the new strategy has been designed to provide people with information about the Tanzania tourism sector with the idea that they will then be interested in visiting the country and its attractions.
“As you know,” said Mr. Tengeneza, “[the] tourism industry in Tanzania, like other economic sectors, encounters great challenges in terms of marketing competition.”
“A discussion between the TTB’s Domestic Tourism Sensitization Committee and musicians is underway to see how they could work hand-in-glove to realize the initiatives,” said the Senior Public Information Officer.
In order to achieve this objective, the TTB will work in partnership with the committee to select one day a week for musicians to perform and educate people on the country’s tourism sector on what to expect from tourist attractions as well as how to arrange for affordable visits to various tourist attractions.
According to Mr. Tengeneza, the performances would be held in recreational halls as well as in variety of other public places throughout the city.
“As TTB and other stakeholders, we have decided to embark on this campaign after observing that the majority of local people don’t have the culture of visiting tourist attractions that their country is endowed with,” he said, saying that,” he said.
Mr. Tengeneza went on to explain that the music groups that will be involved in the scheme will come from a number of different places throughout the country and will eventually perform in up-country regions as well.
“We obviously need to have an exciting band that would be our identity and support us to promote the domestic tourism,” he said.
In addition to the musical performances, Miss Domestic Tourism, Salma Mwakalukwa, will also quiz people on various tourism issues during these events, with prizes, such as the chance to visit selected tourist attractions, being offered to those who win.
“As our audience will mostly be Tanzanians,” said Mr. Tengeneza, “we would use Kiswahili so that the message could be understood by all people.”
