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News we are receiving from reliable sources, say the best three marketing firms of foreign origin are set to represent and promote Uganda in the best source market for Uganda tourists.
This comes under the support of competitiveness and enterprise development project (CEDP) under the Ministry of Finance coordinated by Private Sector Foundation Uganda (PSFU). The CEDP project is aimed at promotion and growth of tourism numbers in Uganda. It also seeks to build a local tourism sector capacity with local tourism providers becoming better players on the international market.
This effort will supplement the timely representation on the international scene through trade exhibitions such as the WTM London, ITB Berlin and Indaba. This campaign will be targeting the English and German speaking societies and the PR firms have been selected with critical consideration of their competitiveness while considering the languages, location and the origin of the Ugandan visitor’s from America and Europe. These companies include PHG consulting, Kamageo and KPRN
The primary role of the firms is to leverage Uganda as a prime tourism travel destination and increase tourism arrivals and length of stay in the country. Most likely, as result of this effort, the tourism service providers in Uganda will realize an increase in inquiries and booking from these source markets being targeted by this promotion project that is costing Uganda around 4.95bn shillings. Besides promoting to visitors, the drive is also aimed at attracting foreign investment in Uganda’s tourism industry and also expected to provide training to Ugandan tourism businesses.
In the past, the Uganda government has been criticized for spending very little budget on promoting the country compared to sister countries in the East African Community where they spend higher tourism marketing budgets. With Kenya leading in the highest marketing budget spent annually Uganda was spending a smaller budget. The countries in East Africa are competing on the same visitors coming to the region. With the East African visa now available, multiple countries stand a chance of benefiting from the same visitors since it will be easier and cheaper for them to cross the boarders when they are within the region.
In 1960s, Uganda was East African leader of the visitors intrested to see wildlife. However between 1971 and 79 during the Iddi Amin rule, political instability and massive legal hunting of wildlife, the country’s visitation status fell out of competition to now Kenya and Tanzania that have been leading for several decades. It is hoped that, with such generous efforts of the government towards marketing Uganda as a destination, the industry visitation status could start ranking higher in the region.