By Yunus S Saliu
The concerned Chairman of the Gambia Hotel Association (GHA) as disclosed that with the dwindling in number of tourist that are expecting in the destination in this 2019/2020 winter tourism season there will still be employment within the tourism industry. “Though, employers are more careful in term of employment this season compare to the way they normally does in the past seasons,” he said.
The Chairman of the GHA, Bunama Njie said “it is not a secret that the industry would at least lose 10-20 per cent of the workforce from the tourism industry” or put them on hold for such a time there is an increase number in the arrivals.
He explained that Thomas Cook bankruptcy has effect on global tourism sector but most likely on The Gambia because the airlines has been a very good partner to The Gambia “in the sense that they were having daily flight to The Gambia during the winter season from the UK end and other parts of Europe which include Thomas Cook Belgium, Germany and Thomas Cook Northern Europe.”
All hope not lost as he disclosed that “the Thomas Cook Northern Europe part is still flying they are going to continue flying this winter to The Gambia with two flights – one from Oslo and the other from Stockholm.” The affected part is the Thomas Cook UK which constituted about forty to forty five per cent of the total visitation number to The Gambia.
In spite of ongoing efforts to engage other airlines to fly to the destination, the ceased operation of Thomas Cook will still have an impact on the 2019/2020 winter tourism season in The Gambia.
Applauding the authorities on their efforts, Chairman Njie said they are moving on well with the support from the government of the Gambia, Ministry of Tourism and Culture and Gambia Tourism Board saying: “we have been working closely as a group with stakeholders to see how to mitigate this huge loses anticipated.”
The Chairman of the GHA recognized the effort of The Gambia Experience who has added three extra flights which are flights from Gatwick, Birmingham and Manchester; he said this will help in a great way. As usual, “we are hopeful that TUI will start flying to the destination soon as we are expecting 15 – 20,000 tourists from TUI UK who are a new player in the market.”
Among other expected new airlines is TAP Air – Portuguese airlines which has just joined destination Gambia, also working with scheduled airlines like Royal Air Maroc, Turkish Airlines among others.