ATCL to add second flight to China
Dar es Salaam. Five months after national carrier Air Tanzania Company Limited (ATCL) resumed weekly flights to China, the carrier is set to launch a second flight to Beijing.
This comes after the Chinese Ministry of Health scrapped the quarantine requirement for travelers with effect from January 8, 2023.
China has reported 10.2 million cases of Covid-19 patients since the pandemic began at the end of 2019, and had set conditions for all travellers entering the country to spend eight days in quarantine.
However, information from China's immigration department has said that from January 8 next year, the policies and measures including the resumption of accepting and approval of Chinese citizens' applications for ordinary passports for the purposes of tourism and visiting friends abroad will be resumed.
The Director General of ATCL, Ladslaus Matindi said they are expecting an increase in the number of passengers with the relaxation of the travel measures by the Chinese authorities.
"We are looking to increase the trips to China after the start of the implementation of the statement, previously we had one scheduled weekly flight, but now we expect to have two flights per week because there may be an increase in passengers and we expect to increase capacity. We are ready for that," he said.
In addition, Matindi said the previous conditions reduced the number of Tanzanian businessmen who were travelling to China for fear of incurring high expenses.
"Many businessmen rushed to the markets of Dubai and Turkey, and many started ordering their products online; in fact, travelers, especially those from Tanzania, failed to travel," he said.
However, Matindi said that the relaxation of the conditions will increase the number of passengers who will be connecting flights from different countries, something that was difficult prior to the changes.
"For travellers who connect flights from other countries, they also had challenges because of the quarantine," he said.
Dr. Gladsone Mlay who is the Acting Marketing Director of the Tanzania Tourism Board (TTB) said that the scrapping of quarantine by China is an opportunity for Tanzania’s tourism market.
"This is an opportunity for us, and we have planned to attend their tourism exhibition as well as invite big tourism companies from China to further open the Tanzanian tourism market," he said.
Dr. Mlay added that he believes the conditions will be a great boost to tourism as TTB aims to reach more than 33,000 tourists from China by the end of 2023.
