The Citizen (Dar es Salaam)
Vicent Mnyanyika
8 July 2009
The Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism have put in place strategies that will enable effective promotion of domestic tourism in the country.
Speaking to The Citizen yesterday at the Dar es Salaam, international Trade fair (DITF) the spokesperson of the ministry of Tourism and Natural Resources, G. Matiko, said many Tanzanians view tourism as a foreign phenomenon and they are not part of it.
Mr Matiko said Tanzanians the idea of domestic tourism is not well understood by many people in the country.
He said the ministry has seen that and during this financial year plans were to ensure that at least 600,000 local tourists are encouraged to visit the tourism attractions in the country.
He said they were optimistic that the target would be reached given the recent trends. He said in the last two years, number of domestic tourists has gone up from 200,000 people to 400,000.
"We are very much committed to educate people on domestic tourism. People should understand that visiting the tourism attractions help to raise tourism revenues," said Mr Matiko.
"These attractions are not for foreigners only as many people think, this is a wrong notion which we have to fight."
He said there were many people in Dar es Salaam for instance, who have never visited any tourist attraction, despite presence of historical town of Bagamoyo only few kilometres from the city.
He said making a tourism expedition was not expensive as people think, calling for people to visit their own attractions and not waiting for foreigners to know the country than Tanzanians.
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