Last year, I did a lot of travelling around East Africa and beyond. From these travels I picked up lots of lessons about life, society but most importantly, about the tourism industry or tourism. Many of those who picked the tab for my travels (and I am very grateful) counted on me to go out, see and then tell. I want to believe that I did my best and promise to do it even better moving forward.  

Tourism is a key sector for the East African region responsible for bringing in a significant amount of foreign exchange and employing many people in all the East African countries. Many of our economies rely on tourism receipts and a drop in the same often results in a clear negative impact on the affected country.

Tourism benefits are easily spread around the economy and society since a single tourist is likely to leave money with an airline, travel agency, taxi service, restaurant, craft shop, hotels, and so many other places thus keeping several people in a job just by making a decision to travel to a given destination.

Tourism deserves to be valued by the media

What is important is for everyone along the value chain to be aware of their role and play it well if tourism is to thrive. This includes media managers who ought to give tourism stories the prominence they deserve. Tourism stories are not merely leisure stories but key economic stories that need to be told well for everyone to understand. When the media doesn’t give tourism its due space then consumers of the same media may never get to appreciate the industry and see how they can partake in it, either as service providers or consumers. I must commend The New Times for giving space to travel writers like myself to preach this gospel.

Know your niche and market it fully

During my travels I have met key tourism players who have shared powerful insights into the industry over a bonfire in the middle of a game park or as we rode in a safari jeep.

While in Kidepo Valley National Park in Northern Uganda, I met a guy who writes travel books for a living and he told me that Uganda’s niche products were primates and birding but that they were not doing a very good job at marketing these. He said Kenya and Rwanda were far ahead when it came to marketing their tourism products.

The internet is a utility not a favour

I was also lucky to briefly visit Tanzania and learn a thing or two about the industry there. In Tanzania I visited Selous Game Reserve which is bigger in size than Rwanda and Burundi combined. Before and after visiting the Selous as it is called, I stayed at Dar es Salaam Serena Hotel but the whole trip in general taught me something about the role of the internet in the tourism industry. 

According to a senior manager at the Serena hotels, the issue of internet should be looked at from the view point of a utility. She explained that hotels provide water to guests and don’t worry about whether someone took one bath or two. The point is there is water flowing in the taps.

Her advice to hotel owners was that they should ensure their facilities have good internet. In the travel world a poor internet connection is worse than no connection.

Provision of good internet is proof that you understand your customers and the changing trends. A hotel owner in Diani, Kenya for example, said he planned to remove the TVs in the rooms and invest the money for the cable TV in improving his internet services because he realised that guests are no longer interested in what is on TV but rather what is on the internet.

However in camp lodges that are in the middle of game parks it is better to have the wifi only at the dining area because most of the guests are there for quality time away from their busy life and therefore need to log off for most of the time only going online to post a few pictures on their social media accounts so they don’t need internet in their individual tents.

We are past being on social media to doing it well

Technology has in the recent past changed how we interact and social media has become a phenomenon that cannot be ignored anymore. The conversation is no longer about whether you are on it but whether you are doing it well. Travellers now get to know about destinations through recommendations from peers on social media.

Does your facility have a presence on the major Social Media platforms? Do those running the accounts have enough information and skills to respond to online queries in a timely manner? Do you keep track of online trends and adjust accordingly? Do you know what your competitors are doing online to stay in the game?

All these and so many questions arise because at the moment if you are not on social media then you are staying away from conversations that may even be about you and you are being left behind by prevalent trends. Investing in social media training, management and more is no longer an option for those in the travel industry. Kenya Tourism Board as well as Rwanda Development Board – Tourism and Conservation, both do a good job at indulging bloggers and other social media influencers to get their message across.  

Customer care should be top notch

Tourism products are all about experiences and one of those experiences comes from interactions with staff at hotels, airports, taxi services and other places. Ruining these experiences with poor customer care ruins everything. Business owners need to invest in training their staff and following up promptly on customer experiences that don’t go so well.

You may never really know the reputational damage when displeased client visits your facility especially if they own a massive audience on social media. This is not a threat. Go out of your way to make clients feel welcome, make an effort to remember their names, be friendly to their children for if the little ones are not happy then no one will be happy. These clients are your ambassadors ensure they leave happy to tell others to visit.

Infrastructure has to improve

For tourism to thrive, more efforts have to go into improving infrastructure, from international airports to domestic ones to the roads that lead to the parks and inside the parks. Tourists need to enjoy a certain level of comfort whether they are local or international. There is a reason why most luxury buses in the region are to be found on the routes to Mombasa and Malindi. Even RDB had to employ luxury buses for its Tembera u Rwanda domestic tourism campaign.

Festivals boost domestic tourism

For domestic tourism to thrive, the domestic tourist ought to be valued as a customer. This doesn’t just mean having affordable prices but also catering for their peculiar needs. For example when it comes to culinary needs, does your facility serve local dishes that appeal to the palates of the domestic tourist? Is the pricing available in local currency and not always in dollars or Euros? Find out the pain points for a domestic tourist and address them appropriately.

Since tourism is about experiences, even when targeting domestic tourists you should answer the question of what they will do while visiting. Adventure tourism has proved a good magnet for domestic tourists looking for a place to have fun. Besides adventure, festivals are huge when it comes to drawing domestic tourists. Kenya has the Lamu festival, Rusinga festival while Uganda has Nyege Nyege and Bayimba.

Rwanda seems to have dropped the ball regarding the once attractive FESPAD but in Musanze the people at Red Rocks are trying to develop festival tourism by combining it with conservation and involvement of the local population. They have a calendar of events lined up for this year and hopefully many will have a reason to go and visit Musanze for more than just the gorillas.

A lot more work to be done

Tourism in East Africa still faces many challenges like poaching, poor infrastructure, poor skills and the need to develop more tourism products besides wild life. The governments and private sector have a lot of work to do in fixing these issues. In creating an enabling environment, governments need to remove barriers that make our destinations less competitive compared to Southern Africa, North Africa and the Caribbean.

There is also a deep need for those in the industry to educate themselves more about tourism. It is a very broad industry and there is still a lot of room for us to exploit. Things like culinary tourism, farm stays, medical tourism, sports tourism, educational tourism are still below the radar of most tourism boards and yet their potential is so huge.

Lastly, data collection is very important if we are to plan and strategise on how to improve tourism in Rwanda or East Africa. We should not tire from marketing East Africa as a region because we are stronger as a unit than as individual small markets.