A TOTAL of 742,266 tourists visited Tanzania tourism destinations between January and July 2022, up from 546,133 who were recorded during a corresponding period last year.
The increase, which stands at 60 percent of the previous data, became possible due to the government's commitment and continued efforts to market the available tourism destinations within and outside the country.
The statistics were issued by the Acting Director General of Tanzania Tourists Board (TTB), Mr Felix John when addressing a press conference ahead of the event to mark the world tourism that marked every September 27.
At national level, the event will be held in the Njombe region with the aim to launch strategic marketing tourism destinations in the southern circuit.
The initiative is part of continued efforts to execute a strategy that will help the country to achieve its target of notching an income of 6 billion US dollars (about 14tri/-) from five million tourists in the year 2025.
This was also stipulated in the Third Five-Year Development Plan (FYDP III of 2020/2021 to 2025/2026) and article 67 of the election manifesto of the ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) for the year 2020-2025.
"We are continuing to promote and market our tourism destinations available in the country, the target to even surpass the 1.5million tourists who visited Tanzania in 2019 before eruption of Covid-19 pandemic," he said.
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Due to Covid-19, the number of tourists who entered Tanzanian in 2020 dropped to 620,867 whereas the collections also declined to 714.5 million Us dollars from 2.6billion US dollars in the year 2019.
"In 2021 the country received 922,892 tourists with a collection of 1.31 billion Us dollars," he said.
For the financial year 2021-2022, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism was granted 90bn/-, which is equivalent to 6.9 per cent of the whole IMF loan of 1.3tri.- in emergency financial assistance to support Tanzania's efforts in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Speaking, the Njombe Regional Commissioner Anthony Mtaka said they are well organized to host the event that is expected to add value to the tourism sector in the southern circuit.
He also invited investors to utilise the investment in multiple sectors that are supporting development of tourism for it to contribute highly to the economy.
"Njombe has a number of tourism destinations including a famous one the Kitulo national park that is perched between the rugged peaks of the Kipengere, Livingstone and Poroto mountains," he said.
Apart from the tourism sector, Mr Mtaka said the region is open to receiving investors on agriculture and livestock keeping, given that there is conducive weather throughout the year.
