The EATP Launches East African Regional Tourism Campaign
Hopefully, during this festive season, we are to witness a boost in both domestic and regional tourism in Uganda and the East African region tourism business, movement, and flow following the launching of the Tembea Nyumban campaign.
The East African Tourism Platform launched the regional tourism campaign aimed at seeing EAC members explore and exhaust the best and blessings of the region. The campaign is set to run for three consecutive months implementations to promote and marketing strategy to restore tourism in the destination east Africa which was severely affected by the corona pandemic.
The Tembea Nyumbani campaign is geared by the East African Community in collaboration with the East African Tourism sector which represents the tourism sector in the region.
The campaign will cover countries of Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania, Burundi, and South Sudan fortunately, these countries had reached an agreement of free cross-boundary movements without visas, and citizens of this country only have to present their citizen’s IDs.
The undertaken partnership with different key players, the Tembea Nyumbani will promote various tourist packages of the region. It aims to spur tourism business within the community by showcasing the greater treasures for the exciting affordable magic of the region.
On launching the campaign, the EAC Secretary General Dr. Peter Mathuki argued the Tourism Private Sector players to extend affordable domestic and regional packages to entice people to take advantage of the holiday offers especially in this festival season.
In the community, tourism contributes significantly to the economies of the Partner States and is pre-pandemic, contributing 10% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 17% export earnings, and 7% in jobs creation.
And the corona pandemic affected negatively with international tourism arrivals in East Africa dropping by about 67.7%, to an estimated 2.25 million arrivals in 2020 compared to 6.98 million in 2019. The platform believes an uplift in the regional tourism recovery of 4m of the foreign tourist instead of the 2.25m foreign tourists in 2020, and by 2024 comparably expecting to raise to 7m, foreign tourists.
The East African region is known to host quite a great number of enticing landmarks including Africa’s 4th highest peaks, the largest African freshwater lake, and the only endemic destination of the largest ape species (mountain gorillas).
All about the East Africa Tourism Platform (EATP)
The East Africa Tourism Platform (EATP) is the private sector body for tourism in East Africa, working towards promoting the interest and participation of the private sector in the East African Community (EAC) integration process.
The body was established in July 2011 after extensive consultations with tourism stakeholders. It became operational on April 2, 2012, with the support of Trademark East Africa. The vision of creating and promoting a vibrant and diverse single tourism destination is the driving force.
The platform promotes intra and inter-regional tourism through advocacy, marketing, skills development, research, and information sharing. It works closely with national ministries responsible for tourism, hospitality, wildlife, transport portfolios, the EAC Secretariat, Trademark East Africa (TMEA), the East African Business Council (EABC), and private sector organizations in all EAC Partner States to promote intra and inter-regional tourism.
