Overview:

Mombasa, Zanzibar, Rwanda etc have charter tourists companies that simply drop spenders also called tourists

I want you guys to study the chart below very well as Ugandans!

The chart below is as is majorly because we don’t have both a clear marketing strategy and plus not having direct flights to and from those potential business sources for both export and tourism.

As a country we either borrow or ask for aid from many of those countries in the chart above and yet, if we spent some money over a few years on marketing and engaging airlines to fly into Uganda, we wouldn’t need aid from. We wouldn’t need to over borrow from them.

In 2017, I visited Germany and somehow thought I would convince at least one tourist charter company to fly into Uganda.

I went to the headquarters of Condor Airlines, which used to be part of Thomas cook and now runs independently, I met the commercial manager for an hour.

Mombasa, Zanzibar, Rwanda etc have charter tourists companies that simply drop spenders also called tourists

The discussion between the commercial manager of Condor and I was eye opening, these guys will drop 300 tourists into a country at once and that’s crazy business.

The commercial manager said dropping 300 tourists to a destination is massive business and we won’t go a destination that isn’t willing to co-fund positioning of its destination.

They said, if we use usd 500k for marketing at the start, the country puts in half of that

I did the math, if they dropped 300 even once a week, we would get 1,200 Germany tourists and from the airport alone, we would get 1200×100 = usd 120,000 a month from visa and airport tax

And if each spent usd 3k in country that would be usd 3600000 a month multiply by 12 months

Mombasa for example has about 8 charter companies and cruise ships dropping tourists from around the world on weekly basis

Imagine we got 3 companies doing 300 each, we would be on twitter twitting away, would be on jobo now

But the good news is that I have started a conversation with bwana Odrek Rwabwogo and we have a potential charter company willing to discuss the above and am hoping things work out God willing.

Anyways, mine is to try.

Amos Wekesa is the founder, proprietor and managing director of Great Lakes Safaris Limited, a tour operating company in the African Great Lakes region.