By Yunus S Saliu
The Thomas Cook Northern Europe (NE) maiden flight for the 2019 winter tourism season Thursday night landed at the Banjul International Airport with three hundred and sixty-five tourists onboard.
The airbus 330 with capacity of about 380 which airlifted the tourists flew direct from Gothenburg, Sweden to Banjul and was received by officials of the Gambia Tourism Board (GTBoard) and Gambia Tours.
Commenting on the arrival, Adama Njie, Director of Marketing GTBoard said the Thomas Cook Northern Europe will be doing two flights weekly from Northern Europe while the other Thomas Cook NE also will be flying in from Denmark, too, starting from Monday 28th October 2019 as collapse of Thomas Cook UK did not affect Thomas Cook Scandinavia.
He affirmed that the country will feel the pinch of the bankruptcy of Thomas Cook UK but “at the GTBoard, we are very optimistic that as we keep going with the team currently in UK led by the Director General of the GTBoard some positive results will be achieved.”
Still on the collapse of the widely known tour operator, he said “it is an opportunity for us to reposition ourselves as a country and put other things in place to mitigate thing in future to avoid this type of situation.”
Adama however noted that tourism is not about the numbers coming but it is all about people coming to the country and spend in a way that it will trickle down to the local people. “The GTBoard is very congnizant about the fact that tourism can roll when you have people that are spending which is one of the reason we are targeting tourists from the sub region, which among them are Nigerians,” and we are actually blending both, he added.
Charbel Hobeika, Managing Director Gambia Tours reiterated that it is Thomas Cook UK that collapsed not the one of Northern Europe.
On the vacuum left behind by the Thomas Cook UK, he opined that it is not easy to find replacement when almost all bookings have been done. He assured that Gambia Tours is working tirelessly to fill the gap “though for this ongoing season, is too late but hopefully next season thing will get better as we will get better replacement for the UK market.”