How ‘unpleasant habits’ dent tourists experience in Tanzania

By Anganile Mwakyanjala

Treading lightly on this sensitive matter that has always aroused differing views depending on who you ask, but like any other nation, Tanzania receives thousands of visitors from all the corners of the world.

With that being said, a Caucasian automatically stands out in some parts of the country and is mostly likely to be regarded as a tourist or a visitor.

The contrasting views have been raised by some, ‘Ken’ (not his real name) is a German-Tanzanian of mixed heritage, he has lived in Europe and Tanzania alike, he mentioned that all visitors have orientation before visiting a country and they would be taught how to easily interact with locals and how to avoid unpleasant situations like the one Ben went through. At the bottom line the author of the post is a condescending person towards our community members and our norms and habits,” he pointed out. “The staff are being paid low salaries for providing high-quality services. It would be a natural order to try and get an extra coin from those aliens,” he added. Ken’s asserting the low wages in the hospitality industry could have played a role, would mean that it is a crucial issue that has to be prioritized if we aspire to make our tourism industry top-tier as we ambitiously desire to attract 5 million tourists by this year.

Now that's the tricky part, Facebook is worldwide, God forbids his post to go viral, and a country would lose a couple of million dollars without even noticing. Tourists in this day and age are easily spooked, as the tourism sector is recovering, all countries, that is including our neighbours are vehemently marketing their country as the better option and even cheaper, so changing an air ticket to Nairobi and cancelling is as easy as moving thumbs on a phone screen. As a country, we should hold dear to what makes Tanzania unforgettable, its people. Tanzanians are known for ‘ukarimu’ the ‘hospitality’ of our winning personality and it's no time to let a few bad apples taint the image the Tanzania tourism stakeholders have worked so hard to promote.The hospitality industry workers are at the front line of the tourism industry, no matter how many documentaries and social media posts with catchy hashtags we produce to market our unforgettable tourism, what visitors will experience once they are here is the image of the country they will portray to the world, and that image should not be of Tanzanians begging for beer.

How ‘unpleasant habits’ dent tourists experience in Tanzania

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