State minister for Tourism Wildlife and antiquities, Godfrey Kiwanda says Tourism is Uganda’s Foreign exchange earner.
Uganda aims at increasing the number of tourists who visit Uganda from outside country.
“The tourism industry’s growth 2018 overtook other sectors, helped in part by an increase in the number of tourists and incomes at large,” he explained.
He said that basing on that growth, government has announced that it is going to focus more of her energies on attracting an extra one million tourists both locally and internationally.
According to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, Uganda received 1.8million tourists in 2018, up from 1.4million in 2017.
In 2017, the 1.4million arrivals injected about $1.4billion into the economy.
This contributed to about 10 percent of the GDP.
In his speech at Golden Tulip Hotel in Kampala on Tuesday 15th, Godfrey Kiwanda said the Ministry has embarked on further conservation and protection in National Parks and enhancing Water Safety.
“We are going to increase our marketing activities by contracting three more Public Relation firms for Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, (Qatar and Oman), Japan and China markets; the firms will be contacted at a cost of $0.5m per country,” he explained
He further added that last year, Uganda contracted three PR firms from the United Kingdom, USA and Germany at a cost of $ 0.5m each.
When the new PR firms for Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, (Qatar and Oman), Japan and China markets come on board, government will spend $3m on marketing Ugandan tourism.
“2018 has been transformational and the sector has registered strong achievements as well as working towards consolidating our position as the Pearl of Africa and a lot are being done to make sure we are on the top of other sectors,” he stated
Kiwanda further explained that; “Other targets will include digital marketing and use of celebrities who have a big following as tourism ambassadors; they should be able to compose songs for tourism and that can be done by taking them around our parks.”
Other programmes include local and regional campaigns such as Twende Uganda, Destination Uganda and Pearl of Africa campaigns.
