Tour operators hope to benefit from the single tourist visa

Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya did start using their arrangement of a single tourist visa which is intended to market the three nations as a single tourist destination although not much was mentioned about how key stakeholders would put this into practice. Serena Hotels which is the leading regional investor in the hospitality industry partnered with the national carrier, Rwanda Air last week and met local tour and travel operators to improve on their knowledge region’s tourist attractions so that they can grow their businesses so said  Rosemary Mugambi, the director of sales and marketing at Serena Hotels.

She said it is very important for travel agents and tour operates to know what Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda offer in terms of tourism and how they can market all these countries as a single destination. Meanwhile Joseph Birori, the chairperson of Rwanda Tours and Travel Association also said that knowing all the attractions in the 3 countries offer empowers tour operators to effectively market the region.

While talking about the opportunities presented by the single tourist visa, Birori said this have given us a chance to learn more about East Africa which is blessed a variety of tourist attractions like the rare mountain gorillas, cultural and historical sites as well as a beautiful coast line. Kenya has the Masai Mara National Park and the Mombasa beaches on the Indian Ocean while Rwanda and Uganda have mountain gorillas which are not in Kenya.

So if you package these and sell them concurrently, then they become more appealing than when sold as a single attraction and also this gives the visit more interesting experience especially since there those that are interested in seeing as many things as possible.

Although some of these operators say it may be too early to predict the impact of the joint tourist visa on the tourism business say whether number of visitors to the three countries will increase or not due to the ease with the visa clearance, good fruits are expected.

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