One of the world’s richest bio-diversity hotspot, East African country Tanzania will soon establish its tourism presence in India in order to develop the market to increase its share of fast growing Indian outbound travel. Speaking at a press roundtable in Delhi recently on the sidelines of Tanzania tourism road show, Tanzania Tourism Board Managing Director, Devota K Mdachi informed that the NTO will open its India tourism office in Mumbai next month.
And come November, Tanzania will be even more close to India as Air Tanzania will launch its Mumbai-Dar es Salaam flight, a development that’s expected to have significant impact in growing Indian tourist arrivals to Tanzania. Tanzania offers visa-on-arrival for Indian nationals. About 60,000 Indian tourists travelled to east African country in 2017.
“We used to depend solely on our embassy (for destination promotion). We did not have a representation; neither did we have a carrier which would carry tourist from India to Tanzania. We are in the procurement phase, towards the end. By next month we will do the official announcement. So we will have somebody who will do all PR and marketing activity on behalf of the Tanzania Tourism Board,” Mdachi informed. The TTB Representation office will be located in Mumbai.
Furthermore, the TTB MD said, “Air Tanzania is going to start direct flight from Mumbai to Dar es Salaam in November. The flight will take approximately six hours. So by then there will be no need for Indian tourists to take other carriers and have a transit of four to six hours. Gone will be the days when tourist from India will have to go to either Dubai or Doha or Addis to come to Tanzania. We will be having regular flights coming in from Mumbai to Tanzania.”
Indian arrivals have recorded robust growth in the last couple of years with arrivals more than doubling to about 60,000 tourists in 2017. India currently ranks as Tanzania’s fifth largest tourism source market after the US, the UK, Italy and Germany. Tanzania received a total of 1.3 million international tourists last year.
