By Costantine Sebastian
Dar es Salaam. Tanzania has a huge potential to become a leading tourism market in Africa, should the country promote more its abundant attractions, a top Canadian travel manager says.

According to the president and chief operating officer of Uniglobe Travel International, Mr Martin Charlwood, Tanzania has unique and rare tourism resources, which are not well known internationally.

Currently the Tanzania Tourism Board gets and spends less than $3 million (about $4.5 billion) annually to promote the country, which is far below South Africa’s $70 million budget.Tanzania could make a huge turn around if it invested more in tourism advertisement, locally and internationally, says Mr Charlwood.

By comparison, the country lags behind its competitors in the region, and the whole of Africa in terms of aggressive marketing, he says, despite noting some promotion progress in recent years, mostly since the liberalisation of the economy in the mid 1980s.

The travel management expert was speaking at a function to honour Uniglobe Skylink Travel and Tours of Dar es Salaam for scooping a top travel award in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The company won the 2010 Uniglobe Franchise of the Year award in SSA, which was presented to the company last week in Nairobi.

Mr Charlwood said the award means that there are businesses in the country that can provide world-class travel services, which is an important aspect in tourism growth and development, as well as in promoting and marketing destination Tanzania.

“Tanzania has potential to closely compete with the most advanced tourism markets in Africa such as South Africa and North African countries. Apart from the authorities, businesses like Uniglobe Skylink Travel and Tours should worth with other stakeholders to promote the country,” he noted in a speech.

Based in Vancouver, Canada, Uniglobe is the world's largest single-brand travel franchise company with offices in more than 50 countries across six continents.

Despite its unique attractions such as Mt Kilimanjaro and the Ngorongoro Crater as well as unspoilt beaches, Tanzania still performs below most of its competitors, including small markets like Mauritius, in tourist arrivals. The country, which failed to meet its target of hosting a million visitors annually by the end of last decade, attracted 794,000 holidaymakers and business travellers last year.

Tourism and Natural Resources minister Ezekiel Maige said recently that the government's goal is to attract 900,000 to one million tourists in 2011. The sector’s earnings increased by 11 per cent in 2010 to $1.28 billion, helped by the global economic recovery.

Travel and tourism, which fetched $1,178.5 million and $1,310 million in the years ended March 2010 and 2011 respectively, is the second largest foreign exchange earner after gold, and accounts for about 17 per cent of gross domestic product. In its latest review of the economy, the Bank of Tanzania (BoT) says that travel, transportation and other business services constituted the largest share of services receipts, accounting for about 94 per cent of the total.

“The performance of travel (during the year ending March 2010) was associated with investments in the tourism sector, promotional efforts by stakeholders and the Tanzania Tourist Board, which advertised Tanzania as a unique tourist destination; as well as improvement in airline transportation,” BoT noted in its April monthly economic review.

According to the chief executive officer of Uniglobe Skylink Travel and Tours, Moustafa Khataw, tourism performance is currently let down by poor infrastructure, lack of adequate skilled labour and a lean national tourism budget. He said that after a difficult period that recast much of the travel landscape, the sector is slowly recovering from the global economic downturn.

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