Will UWA’s move to drive tourists to parks lift sector?

Tourists tour Queen Elizabeth National Park aboard a van. File photo

What you need to know:

The contention. Whereas UWA says they are getting involved in transporting tourists in order to boost local tourism, private operators say their entry will lead to unfair competition

There was news last month that Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) is in the final stages of hatching a project that will see it directly engage in the business of taking tourists to wildlife destinations across the country.

UWA placed adverts in the newspapers about three weeks ago calling for bids from prospective suppliers of five buses capable of transporting tourists to national parks. This development was met by negative responses from private tour operators, who reckoned that UWA’s joining the business of tour service provision is not right.

The plan
According to UWA spokesman Jossy Muhangi, the authority’s plan to directly take tourists to national parks, is part of a sector-wide initiative funded by the World Bank with the aim of increasing both private and public efforts to develop the tourism industry.

Muhangi says the $25 million (about Shs73b) World Bank initiative (dubbed Competitive Enterprises and Development Projects) is set to provide UWA with $4 million (about Shs11.7b) for the implementation of several schemes of which the tour buses are just one.

He names the other schemes in the project as the setting up of more recreational facilities in the parks, establishment of more viewer-oriented vehicles and boats in the parks, modernising of the gates in the national parks, upgrading the signage and other directional features in the parks, further rolling-out of a smart-card system where visitors to the parks do all bookings and payments electronically, among others.

On particularly acquiring buses, Muhangi reveals that UWA has decided to initially acquire five of them, which they will allocate to five of the major parks and stations around Kampala so that every two or three days, people who have made bookings can be taken to the parks. He adds that the buses should be in operation in three months’ time.

The private tour operators’ resentment of UWA’s proposed buses has been, especially, premised on the argument that UWA will make for unfair competition and even possibly push them out of business. They argue that UWA runs the national parks and also has resources to operate on a very large scale, which private operators cannot afford.

Herbert Byaruhanga, the chairman of the Uganda Tourism Association, contends that UWA’s involvement will actually kill private initiative, and thereby kill innovation and resource optimisation in the sector.

However, Samuel Sanya, the director of Tourism at UWA, says private operators should not see UWA as competition. Because UWA is not coming into the market to operate on a large scale to make profits, but rather to operate on a small scale and mainly to promote local tourism.
Stressing that they are initially introducing only five buses in a sector that needs more than 100 buses, Sanya says UWA’s primary motive is to give more Ugandans a chance to see their country’s wildlife endowment and to appreciate the conservation efforts, so the numbers of local tourists can rise.

“We especially need the numbers of local tourists to rise so that the country has potential to rely on local tourists to finance its conservation efforts, especially during the times when there is a dip in foreign visitors, say when some negative publicity has made them come in less numbers for a few months,” Sanya says, adding, “Yet private people cannot take the initiative for this because their primary concern is to make profit, not necessarily to promote the industry as a whole.”

But Byaruhanga argues that the way to fix the problem of low local tourist numbers is not by UWA directly getting involved in the conveyance of visitors to destination, rather mass sensitisation.

Although figures from the Uganda Bureau of Statistics indicate that the number of local tourists visiting the parks has been steadily rising over the last few years, the numbers are still low.

Only about 35 per cent of average total of 200,000 annual visitors to the parks over the last three years have been Ugandans. UWA’s Sanya says since local tourists actually pay just Shs15,000 to enter the parks as compared to foreigners who pay $40 (about Shs120,000), the numbers of local tourists really need to rise.

However, Byaruhanga emphasizes: “UWA is a government agency, and its mandate is to conserve wildlife and avail an enabling environment, not to compete with the private operators. We will not let them come in to compete with us, we are going to oppose them and protest and even petition the President.”

But perhaps Frank Lyazzi, the principal tourism officer at the Ministry of Tourism, has the best advice for now: “As UWA has made it clear that it is coming in primarily to encourage local tourism, to make our destinations more marketable and accessible to Ugandans, let us give them a chance and see how they go about it. In case they turn out to be adverse competition to private operators, the whole programme can be reviewed.”

Are Private Operators Too Expensive For Local Tourists?

UWA’s Partnerships Coordinator, Samuel Besigye, argues that one of the biggest obstacles to the rise of local tourism has been the lack of affordable alternatives for average Ugandans wishing to go visiting, with private operators being too expensive for an average citizen.
Besigye says UWA’s objective is thus to provide an affordable alternative to ordinary Ugandans.
“I am talking of people such as groups of students, religious groups, corporates and the like,” Besigye says. “Private operators generally don’t want to deal with this segment because they do not see much profit to be made from them.

They do not even have the capacity to cater for them as these are normally large groups who can hardly use the small 4-Wheel Drives most private operators have.”

But Isaac Kibirango, the director of Mpologoma Tour and Travels, disagrees. He argues that not all private operators are expensive, and says there are actually many operators who will not hesitate to take local tourists for charges that are just a small percentage of what foreigners pay. “There are people catering for high-end visitors able to pay in thousands of dollars, most of whom are foreigners, and then you also have those catering for the ordinary visitor who is most times your average Ugandan who does not need and cannot afford luxurious service.”

An inquiry on the ground, though, revealed that perhaps private operators’ charges are somewhat too expensive for the average Ugandan. The cheapest package this newspaper could find was a Shs900,000 for a 3-day visit to either Lake Mburo National or Queen Elizabeth National Park.
Majority packages on the market require between Shs1.5m and Shs3m depending on the national park one would like to visit. (The packages include transport, accommodation and meals).
“What we are designing are packages that will cost a Ugandan about Shs300,000 to go visiting for say two or three days, with transport, accommodation and light meals catered for,” says UWA spokesperson Muhangi.