Dar Es Salaam — Unless the government revive a strong local airline and encourage local participation in the country's tourism business, Tanzania's natural heritage will merely be serving the economic interests of the global tourism markets, industry sources have warned.

Tanzania, though among the world's top tourist destinations because of her world class tourist attractions, experts say that under the reigning package tourism arrangement, the local economy was capturing just peanut of the total earnings that the business generates, globally.

"True, Tanzania could be losing but package tourism is inevitable under the business environment of today," Tanzania Tourist Board (TTB) Managing Director, Dr Aloyce Nzuki told the 'Daily News' in an exclusive interview in Dar es Salaam on Thursday, calling for strategies to maximise benefits out of the system.

He conceded that in a market where majority tour operators and hotel owners were foreigners, the country was earning peanuts out of the billions that the tourism industry generates as a large chunk of dollars was retained in the countries where the tourists come friom.

"Foreign based tour operators always buy hotel rooms bulkily at discounts and definitely if TRA (Tanzania Revenue Authority) calculate taxes based on sales, they will collect less," Dr Nzuki said, challenging the revenue agency to study the system and come up with measures to increase revenues out of package tourism.

He described the tourism business this year as highly impressive, saying the Northern tourist circuit-Ngorongoro, Manyara, Kilimanjaro and Serengeti national parks-were currently grappling with high number of tourists.

"We don't have statistics right here on how many tourists have already visited the country but they are definitely many-almost all the hotel rooms are booked, with about 4,500 cars entering the national parks, monthly," said the TTB chief.

According to the board's estimates, about one million tourists were expected in the country, raking in some 1.7 billion US dollars (about 2.6trn/-) and with the tourism season just at the middle, indications are evident that the target will be surpassed by the end of the season.

What puzzles industry watchers however are the invisible trickle-down effects of the tourist dollars as the shilling keeps depreciating not only against the US dollars but also against the neighbouring countries' currencies like the Kenyan shilling.

"Like mining, never expect tourism dollars to stabilise the shilling-those are earnings merely for record purposes because we hardly earn them in a practical sense," a financial analyst with a city-based commercial bank told the 'Daily News', charging, "As long as foreigners will continue controlling this business, forget about tourism benefiting the local economy."

A senior officer with a tour company cited international flights, which he said consume between 30 and 40 per cent of the total tourist package, saying unless Tanzania established a home-based strong airline to capture flight revenues, "that revenue will ever remain out of touch."

However, the TTB boss challenged Tanzanians to massively participate in tourism business to help the country increase earnings out of the lucrative industry, "If tour operators were Tanzanians, package tourism wouldn't be a problem because each dollar generated will come in the country."