With the issue of accommodation for visitors to Rwanda now addressed, experts have urged local hospitality industry players to focus on food, by bringing in diversity as a way of making their facilities more hospitable.

Over the last 10 years, the number of visitors’ arrivals to Rwanda has more than doubled, from about 500,000 to 1.3 million last year.

And the number of accommodation rooms has tremendously increased from nearly 2,500 rooms in 2006 to way over 10,000 today, according to statistics from the Rwanda Development Board.

With the number of tourists growing and accommodation increasing, experts say the next and tricky step is to make sure that the visitors like what they eat and get as much as they need.

"We want to tell our hoteliers that we need more than just a comfortable bed and chair; we also need food. It is at the centre of everything as a hungry tourist will not have the energy to go and track gorillas,” says Seth Butera, the director of the Rwanda Hospitality Association, the hoteliers’ forum in the country.

Last month, Butera was in a bit of a shock when he heard that the only complaint from participants at the World Economic Forum for Africa in Kigali in May was about food.

President Paul Kagame said in June that everything went well during the meeting except that participants were lost when it came to food service as the quantity of food served at their hotels was far from being enough.

As if the President’s warning to hoteliers that they should serve enough food was not quickly noticed, one agricultural research summit that took place in town in June was also marred with complaints about little food served to delegates.

"We don’t have an excuse to not have people satisfied when they are here. We don’t lack food in the country and people shouldn’t look at Rwanda as a place where you don’t eat because the domestic production of food is good enough to cater for the country’s growing number of tourists,” Butera told The New Times.

He said the problem might have occurred as a result of individual hotel systems that focus more on revenue maximisation and forget about etiquettes like making sure that clients are happy and enjoy their stay.

"We have talked about this and we have come up with common understanding about standards,” he said.

But it’s not only going to be about quantity but also variety of food if Rwanda is to remain one of the best destinations for tourists and big international conferences as it is in line with the government’s aim.

Changing trends

Sandra Idossou, the owner and publisher of The ServiceMag, a publication dedicated to the promotion of customer care in the country, said she has noticed a trend in Rwanda and how it is being changed and should continue to be changed.

She said the hospitality industry has put in a lot of efforts in reaching out to the growing numbers of tourists in the country and appreciates that she can have a variety of food in some specific restaurants offering food from specific countries.

"In terms of diversity of offers, we now have restaurants for many categories and specialities. I’m often happy that in a week, I can try out cuisine of seven different countries from Indian to French. Restaurant owners have made tremendous efforts to offer service of standards,” she said.

But Idossou advises Rwanda’s hoteliers to be more creative and move away from their traditional way of looking at food and its preparation.

"In serving tourists, Rwanda has the basic offers available. Compared to some other African countries, Rwanda is lacking culinary culture. People are content with basic foods so this usually stops creativity and diversity in terms of offerings to tourists,” she said, warning that, for instance, a buffet in a local restaurant has basically the same presentation and food overtime that one can actually close the eyes and still know exactly what is available.

That needs to change and it will require some cultural adjustments, she advised, whereby people need to be more creative with food preparation if they are to satisfy tourists’ needs.

"Culture plays an important role. I come from a culture where, for instance, the maize can be cooked in over ten different ways. This helps to have a variety and allow visitors discover a variety of culinary experiences,” Idossou said.

"The challenge today is to help restaurant and hotel owners go out of their way and comfort zones to be creative enough. One other challenge we often face is the fact that the hotel and restaurant owners do not always hire people who have been exposed enough. They think cooking can be done by anyone thus; they are not able to see the importance of hiring qualified chefs.”

While the diversity of food cannot be a problem with international hotel brands such as Marriot, Serena, Radisson Blu, and Accor, among others, already in Kigali, the satisfaction for tourists’ food needs will come from small and medium local hotels and restaurants.

Butera said it’s high time that the latter take advantage of the changing tourism sector by diversifying their food offers.

"We need to ensure that middle income hotels and restaurants also have diversified food. The reason why they didn’t have it before was because they weren’t sure of getting the clientele but now we are sure about the stable and growing number of our tourists. It’s a matter of sharing ideas about how to diversify our food chain,” he said.

The Country Manager for Serena Hotels in Rwanda, Charles Muia, agreed with Butera but also pointed to a larger source of the solution: ensuring that local farmers take advantage to provide the needed food items in hotels.

He said there are instances where some items are not available on local market and there is willingness by some farmers to venture on that opportunity.

"For example, lamb, cured pork products are not enough. There is also scarcity of tilapia fish. We must keep on working with the farmers to always improve on quality and seek for international certification to ease the curiosity coming in with international players,” he said.

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