Your Excellency, the Tourism Sector that forms 18 to 20 percent of the GDP used to be one of the most important sources of revenues of The Gambia. In your presentation would you please give us a brief overview of the tourism sector?
Thank you. The tourism sub sector of The Gambia started about 33 years ago when we attracted a lot of Scandinavians to this country and then the industry later started growing. And as you rightly stated it is now contributing about 18% of the GDP. The reason is basically that tourists just come here for the sun and the beach. During winter, we have a lot of chartered flights from Europe especially Germany and the Scandinavian countries. But recently we have had a shortage in the number tourists coming into this country. There has been an average of 20 to 30 percent drop in the sector, which has led us now to implement a new resuscitation program policy "1995 - 2000" and in so doing redirect the course in which the tourism industry is moving. The revitalization programme is looking at attracting upper class tourists, which can and will contribute more to our economy. If you have less tourists coming into the country but they spend more, it is of course better than more coming but spending less. So our focus now is to attract high spending tourists and start building four and five star hotels so that we can attract the individuals we are looking for.
In order to revitalise the sector, a Tourism Development Program has been launched. Could you briefly present this plan?
Right now we have the programme for revitalisation of our tourism sub-sector, which will take at least three years in order for tourism to make up 20% of GDP. But we think we don't have the correct statistics right now. Some statistics suggest 12% and some 18%. But we think this will be increased at least by 2% by the year 2002.
The revitalisation programme is going to concentrate on the legal and institutional reforms of some of our institutions that opted for the management and control of tourism development in this country, concentrating thus on creating the necessary incentives for investment, particularly in the four to five star hotels. The latter includes huge tax incentives where the government will be providing three-year tax holidays as well as duty waiver on the importation of machinery for the project. Other incentives include the TDA program where the government plans on giving free land away to those investors planning on building luxury hotels.
On the other hand we are looking at the all-inclusive package tourism. We have already identified an area for that and will encourage people to invest in this area as well.
Finally, in addition to all of these investors incentives we are creating, we are also embarking on a fierce promotion and marketing campaign revealing The Gambia as the tourist destination.
We are going to participate in the World Travel Market in London and in Berlin at the ITP.
You decided to close all the Bars and Restaurants in the TDA. As well as the Paradise Beach Hotel, which had been operating for about 20 years. What is your plan? Will you decide to pull down the bad ones and leave the good ones?
First of all the idea of beach bars came when tourist industry was at its infant stage. We wanted to encourage Gambians to participate by encouraging them to have beach bars because they didn't have much capital to put up hotels at the beginning. But now because of the investment in the tourism industry, we think there is the need to revisit that policy that was adopted some 30 years ago.
The beach bars have contributed a lot to the creation of the bumster problem, because the owners encourage the boys by telling them that any tourist they bring to these bars will earn them something in return. I believe therefore, that if we begin with the beach bars, it will act as a deterrent and the bumster menace will be at minimum, although we know that cannot entirely do away with bumsters.
Tourism suffers from bumsters. This is an economic and social problem. What are the Government's efforts to face this issue?
We have a programme in which we have been talking to them to sensitise them on the importance of the industry explaining that if they destroy the industry themselves, they won't have tourists to follow, which will lead to them no longer be able to do their job. So, they have to make sure that they work in partnership with the government to make ensure the tourism industry grows every year.
We must admit however that 20 percent of tourists to The Gambia in 1999 would not come in the year 2000 because of the bumster issue, because of the weak infrastructure and because of the lack of promotion.
The one problem we can solve immediately is the bumster issue. We cannot go to WTM for example and make any significant impression when everybody knows that we have a problem with bumsters. I think we have to clean our house first before we can promote our product to be competing in the sub-region. That's why we are dealing with the problem.
Already we have a scheme known as the Tourist-Guide scheme which we are developing as an alternative for people we think can be trained as tourist guides to conduct tourists and explain to them what we have, the historical sites, eco-tourism sites, and so on. In any case, that also is a package. So, its not like we are just going to take them out and we don't have anything for them. We are trying to promote them also to participate meaningfully in the industry.
The departure of FTI caused a drastic decline in the tourism industry and affected investors confidence as well as contributed to the depreciation of the Dalasi. What role is the ministry playing in order to inverse this trend? Is the Government willing to bring back FTI to the Gambia as well as accept the all-inclusive package?
FTI was and still is very important to the tourism industry in The Gambia, since they are responsible for the German market. It is clear that their retreat has adversely affected the industry. Now that Air Tours has acquired FTI, we have started talks with them recently in order for them to come back into our market. So, now we will talk to them on the issue of creating a discussion platform to see what we can do. Either way, we will be encouraging others also to participate in the industry.
| I think the problem of FTI is that of the all-inclusive package and other associated problems like the bumsters and the quality of the hotels. The problem with the all-inclusive package for the FTI was that they wanted to do it in the same existing hotels. These hotels have links with other services like the restaurants, the taxi drivers and the like. So, these services have forced the restaurants to close down if they had adopted the all-inclusive package and our people will not benefit because it is a package through which they were responsible for providing everything the tourists may need.
So, we suggested creating a new site that doesn't have any links with any of the existing services. We will then embark on a sensitisation process because it is a new thing to The Gambia. The population will not understand the package without this and it will lead to a general outcry. Right now, we are engaging communities by teaching them that the all-inclusive package is very important to The Gambia's economy.
We also believe that if we bring back the all-inclusive, they have a responsibility to the communities with the package. We would like to see them cooperating with the people in whatever they are doing because the poverty in Africa requires them to help the people in their surroundings. We know the importance FTI has for the development of our Tourism industry, which is why we will encourage them to come back as soon as possible.
What are the Government's plans to target new market in order to attract more tourists as well as high-spending tourists. What Tourism segment and new countries are targeted? Don't you think a focus has to be made on promotion? What about upgrading the current hotels?
What we are trying to do is attract the Americans market. That's why we have launched and are promoting our annual festival called the Roots-Homecoming festival. In fact, the idea of the festival was conceived from our diversification programme. We attracted a lot of Americans during that first program and we want to sustain that. Also in our program of revitalization we will be trying to promote our marketing activities and product in the American market but we have to consolidate our European market first. And then concentrate on the American market through promotion campaign and marketing.
We will achieve these through visiting our embassy in Washington and New York and we are working on the modalities to see how bet we can strengthen those so that we can also take up promotional activities in tourism.
We already have an office in the UK, which is responsible for promoting our product in the UK. The Gambia Experience is one of the offices we work with, but we also have our own office also responsible for promotion. Because Air Tours are promoting a particular product our office promotes the general product that we have. We are printing about 20,000 brochures thereby bringing the new image of The Gambia out to the market. We are also making promotional videos, which will be taken to WTM in November to show the world what we have.
The new image is the "Smiling Coast". We want to make sure we smile more and bring in new products. People need to see new things that is why are developing our infrastructure encouraging lots of activities such as deep sea fishing, and eco-tourism and are also developing our cultural science. We don't want to concentrate solely on the sun and the beach anymore. We need to offer something fresh and new so that anybody's visit to The Gambia will be an enjoyable one.
I would like you to make a comparison with neighbouring countries: How do you imagine the development level of the tourism sector in the medium run?
Our main skill in terms of investment is that we have a less bureaucratic system compared to our neighbour Senegal that has a tedious francophone bureaucracy. One of the skills we have is the less bureaucratic process and secondly we have a lot of incentives for investors. We also have stability in this country, which is an important factor for investors to remember. As for the infrastructure, we always want to be a step ahead of our competitors. Some of them would love to be like us today but we are not wholly satisfied with our present condition.
The change of Secretaries of State at the Tourism Department was an indication that something radical needed to be done with tourism. Do you think you are the man of the new trend?
I cannot praise myself but we are definitely doing something about it. However we will not be able to do much this season, because we have about a month to go and I am just four weeks old here. So whatever we may significantly do is targeted for the year 2001, not this year. So, that's why we are embarking on our training up exercises to make sure that complaints by tourists will be addressed in preparation for the years. In that way when the tourists will come back they are sure to take back with them the good news thus promoting the industry on our behalf and saving us large sums of money to be invested in promotion. I am not saying I am the man for the job but I will do my level best so that anybody who takes my place will continue the good work I have started.
Q 10/ What is your final message to our readers on anything you think will be important for them to know about your sector that we haven't touched during the interview?
A11/ Yes, I want your readers to know that we are inviting investors into this country particularly in the tourism sector which is one of the fastest growing sectors in our economy and that there are investment opportunities for investors and long standing stability in this country and our economy is a liberalised one.
We are implementing what we call our Vision 2020 document, which is calling for a private sector -led economy. So we need the private sector to support our effort in developing our tourism sector. As I said before, we have a tax-free holiday for three years and free land for investors who want to come and participate in building four to five star hotels. We also have an investment Guarantee Agency in The Gambia, which protects foreign investors. The legality there is the fact that we are a part of the multi-lateral investment guarantee Agency. |
Department of State for Tourism and Culture