Consistency will take you places

Tourism Development is multi-faceted. It is about the product, developing the product of tourism, regulation in the tourism industry and creating policy. It is about quality assurance, ensuring that the product we are putting out to the market is good and the players follow certain guidelines or regulations. 

It is about promotion, making sure that Uganda as a destination is well known within itself as a country at the domestic level, regional level, and also internationally. 

How have you gotten to where you are today?

Hardwork, consistency, career development and training. I also network, making sure that we deal with the different stakeholders in the market. So, it is a combination of a number of things.

What reasons would you give a Ugandan to visit Uganda?

Uganda first of all is a beautiful country. The location is uniquely placed, it is astride the equator, so it enjoys the best of what is at the equator but also has elements of what comes from the northern hemisphere and what comes from the southern hemisphere. 

It is on a raised plateau. When you talk about countries alongside the equator, they are normally humid and very hot but Uganda provides a different environment that is more conducive to many tourists. 

It has probably the best weather for climate, has very hospitable people, and when you talk about the attractions of Uganda, you would say it has the best natural and cultural attractions. 

We have a very wide cultural offer, we have a lot of wildlife in this country, and we are prized to be a birding destination with more than 10 percent of our bird species known to the world. Why? This is because the birds from the northern hemisphere tend to converge toward the Equator line and the birds from the southern hemisphere do the same and there are those that are endemic to the equator line. 

Then we have the forest environment, and semi-arid environment, so the geography of Uganda really makes it one of the best places or destinations to visit from a natural and cultural point of view. 

What is your favourite attraction in Uganda, and why?

That is a hard one for somebody who has visited a lot of attractions in the country. I think about the water resources because I have been to Lake Victoria, and many of the islands, I have been to the source of the Nile and tributaries of the Nile. attractions around the water resources are quite attractive and going to the islands and beachfront is very refreshing. But the game parks are equally refreshing, seeing the different wildlife we have in the parks both the forested parks; the Bwindis but also the savannah parks and then the grassland parks. It is a beautiful combination that we talk about, so it is a hard choice to make. 

What has been your biggest career achievement?

At the time that we came to the ministry in the early 2000, Uganda was attracting about 450,000 visitors, now that it has grown almost three times, many of the parks or protected areas are insecure. 

Now that many of these places are pacified, people are now moving to these spaces.

Tourism was not a priority sector. If you remember in the olden days, we used to talk about poverty eradication and action programmes. 

Now that we are talking about the National Development Programmes, tourism has been prioritised as a long-hanging fruit that will deliver Uganda to the Promised Land. 

So, we have been part of that journey ensuring that we write the right policies, develop the regulatory environment, market the destination, and work on product development, and some of these things have started showing. The numbers have increased, the revenues have increased, the product focus has improved.

We are now working on the source of the Nile, we are working on Kitagata Hot Springs and these are things that we just used to talk about all the time that “this is nice” but now that we have translated into actual product development, it’s an achievement that you want to reflect on. 

The MICE industry, the meetings/incentives industry, I think that one of the first big conventions/events that we talked about at the time was CHOGM around 2007, and the effort that we put in to host the GHOGM event, since then a lot of hotels have span around, since then a lot of conferences are being hosted in the country and now Uganda is looked at as a MICE destination. 

Recently we had the NAM Summit G77, these are all achievements that have come up and have been implemented through the work we participated in. 

From where you sit, as a person who contributes directly to the promotion of the destination, what is it that you would like to be done better to boost Uganda?

We still need to do more work in developing the product. Many of the products that we have need work in terms of infrastructure, need work in terms of visitor infrastructure, we are improving on visitor infrastructure. 

We also need to do more in terms of promotion, Uganda is a beautiful destination but not well plugged into many of the markets. We need to ensure that the travel trade is seeing Uganda and selling Uganda. 

There are these international travel markets that we go to such as London, Germany, South Africa, and the United States, we need to broaden our focus in these markets. 

We need to also sell niche products because people are looking for experiences, people want to come and have an experience of a lifetime and to get lost in Uganda and see the birds, immerse in the cultural offer that we have, do the adventure, climb the mountains, so on and so forth. 

These are things that people need to see but more importantly, we need to work on the infrastructure, getting to Uganda, connectivity into Uganda. 

Good enough, Uganda Airlines is now available and is flying to quite a number of destinations but also working with different Airlines to ensure that many more people can come to Uganda directly. 

Working on the internal transportation, the roads have improved, the trunk roads but also the inner roads leading us to these key attractions are important, we need to work on that. 

In terms of ICT infrastructure, some of these places that you go to are a bit remote and you might not have a stable network. 

But we are talking of a time when people were just doing instant photography, “I see something nice, snap it and share it with the world.” Now it is a bit frustrating when you check and the network is not performing very well. These are areas that we need to boost. Good enough, we are now aligned through the programme to many of these sub-sectors and we are directly telling them what we need to see happen in order to see this transformation.

When you are not working and busy, what takes your time?

I do some sports and I try to keep fit by running around a bit but tourism is that sector where everybody immerses in the after work so yes, we do work related to tourism but also go and tour around. 

This is an interesting sector where you enjoy what you do after the office work. So, on the weekends, why not go around and see some interesting places in the country, go to the islands and everywhere.

MAKING STRIDES

We have been part of the journey ensuring that we write the right tourism policies, develop the regulatory environment, market the destination, and work on product development, and some of these things have started showing. The numbers have increased, the revenues have increased, the product focus has improved.