BY DICKSON NG`HILY
11th October 2012
According to official and media reports, tourism remains an important pillar in our economic development compared to others, therefore, Tanzania needs a sound carrier to act as a catalyst to bring about a tourism revolution.
Dr Odass Bilame, Head of Economic Department at St. Augustine University of Tanzania, told this paper that, Tanzania like many other African countries, compete with each other in attracting more tourists and the only way to bring them home is to have a stable national airline.
“We are competing, there must be winners and losers and if we are not going to revive our national airline then we are likely to be taken off the industry easily as our competitors are strengthening their national carrier companies,” he said.
Referring to Rwanda, Bilame said, “Even Rwanda has beaten us; they do have a national carrier which has direct flights to different parts of Africa, but when it comes to Tanzania, nothing is there. With such a situation, will we manage to penetrate the marker?” According to him, it is widely known that a national airline works hand in hand with tourism bodies in order to campaign for the tourism potential of a country which in turn bring about more foreign transaction and expand national economy.
“We need to fetch them (tourist) from their respective homelands such as America, Canada, Japan, China etc; and if we don’t have that capacity, we won’t have them here, they will be taken to South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda etc,” he stressed.
A study on tourism industry conducted by Dr Charles Kitima, Vice Chancellor with St. Augustine University of Tanzania (SAUT), revealed that at least one percent of air travel sub sector market share is owned by locals thus gives foreign carries a go ahead in dominating the country’s skies.
Therefore, media reports confirm that in order for the tourism sector to be able to take off effectively, Tanzania would seriously need to revive and strengthen Air Tanzania Company Limited (ATCL) since the move would help stimulate the country’s tourism industry.
It is said that Tanzania lost a chance to turn Air Tanzania into tourism focused airline when it invited South African Airways (SAA) as a strategic investor yet the SAA was working on its strategy of networking Africa which was not meant to favor Tanzania’s tourism.
Apolinary Tarimo of ETN Tanzania (global travel industry news) reports that, aviation experts see Tanzania with ample opportunities in travel trade and tourism yet lacking vision in running air travel business.
According to statistics at the Tanzania Civil aviation Authority (TCAA) as of August 31, this year, a total of 72 air operators have been registered with the authority; however, out of them, only 24 don’t operate including ATCL, yet none of them tackles the international direct flight.
While ATCL has no aircraft yet, its license expires at the end of February next year, other air companies have failed to operate due to the expiration of either Air Operating Certificate (AOC) or Air Service licenses (ASL). The national carrier’s market share has dropped from 19.2 in 2009 to 0.4 last year.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
No comments:
Post a Comment