Over 80 per cent of businesses in the tourism sector have recovered following the ease of the Covid-19 pandemic, said Ariella Kageruka, Head of Tourism and Conservation at Rwanda Development Board (RDB).

She was speaking during the celebration of World Tourism Day on September 27 at Kigali Convention and Exhibition Village (KCEV).

The day sheds light on the important role played by tourism in enhancing socio-cultural value, generating employment, and running the economy of a country.

"We are celebrating the tourism sector recovering, especially the MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences & Events) sector," said Kageruka, adding that people in the sector have also returned to their jobs, more careers have been created and the number is higher than it was in 2019.

Kageruka also highlighted that entrepreneurs and partners enabled it to happen.

She said that tourism activities unrelated to the national parks have also increased, including sport tourism.

"In the past days, even when we had more Covid-19 cases, Rwanda kept receiving conferences and other events related to sport. That has reached a good level. The country has established infrastructures that were needed and has involved partners, including federations, to convince international organisers to come and host sports tournaments such as BAL here in Rwanda,” she said.

This year's theme for World Tourism Day, "Rethink Tourism," reminds the players in the sector that "they cannot go back to the old ways of working."

"We're not re-inventing the wheel but rethinking our offers," said Frank Gisha, Director General of Rwanda Chamber of Tourism. "Rwanda has a favourable environment for business so it's time for us to walk the talk."

Gisha also declared that the role played by the public-private partnership through RDB has led to over 80 per cent recovery of businesses in the tourism sector, especially MICE.

"During Covid-19, we had about 18,000 jobs adversely impacted. 2019 was one of our best years where tourism actors employed about 165,000 Rwandans and non-Rwandans. With Covid-19, we had over 8,000 women and youth fired according to a survey conducted in partnership with Mastercard Foundation and ESP," he said.

Gisha noted that they decided to look at proactive advocacy based on numbers and information on where they could invest more as well as the training they could do better to engage other lagging sectors.

Gloria Girabawe, Founder of Flove, a tourism start-up that manufactures locally handmade products which started in 2020, said it was challenging because she didn’t have direct access to people who had been in the industry for long to give her guidance.

"However," she said, "it was interesting because we started as an online business and had online visibility while others were struggling to have all those platforms where people could visit them remotely and purchase from them."

Girabawe commended technology as an important tool that helped her tourism business thrive during the pandemic.

"People weren’t interacting physically and so we took the online way and made sure to be consistent and deliver content on a timely basis," she said. "Having a business that has a website also allowed us to gain trust."

Girabawe also noted that having information (location, age group, etc) about their customers informed their decisions and helped them to improve their products, interact with people daily through email marketing and get feedback that helped them to improve.