By Kebba Ansu Manneh
Kebba Macoumba Njie, Secretary General of Travel and Tourism Association of the Gambia (TTAG) has observed that Gambia’s vibrancy as a leading tourism destination is losing its competitive advantage to other tourism destinations, arguing that diversifying the nation’s source market will be the only way forward for the survival of the tourism industry.
The TTAG Secretary General who also doubles as the Director of Sahel Invest Management International is optimistic of the rebound of Gambia’s tourism industry, adding that returns of tourists in full force will not be anytime soon as widely expected by many tourism workers and stakeholders due to the prevalence of global pandemic.
“Gambia is gradually losing its competitive edge to other destinations in the sub-region because of some of the policies in place such as the $40 tax for visitors coming in and out of the country. No other country in the sub-region imposes such a tax on tourists or visitors coming into their country,” the TTAG Secretary General confirmed.
He added: “If it cannot be eliminated it should be revised downwards. High municipal taxes are another factor which is not only a disincentive to tourism development but to all the sectors.”
Dilating on the way forward for the Gambia’s tourism industry, the tourism and travel doyen observed that it is time for the country to diversify its source market, highlighting the need to attracting good incentives for investment in upcountry River Excursions that is under-utilized.
“Expanding our source markets, we need to focus on promoting regional tourism and Nigeria is a potential source market. Nigerians are going to Dubai and Rwanda in a big way, and they are heavy spenders.
“In France you have Eiffel Tower, Big Ben or London Bridge in UK. The new conference centre could be used for that purpose, but we need another eye catching structure that would propel the image or name of the country as an attractive destination,” he revealed.
According to him, government should also focus on improving security as a means of enticing tourists and visitors to The Gambia.
According to him, killings and arm robbery are creating a bad image for the country and tourists will not visit if the security situation does not improve.
“Most of the streetlights in the tourism development area are not working and should be repaired. Streetlights help improving security of the country and help visitors to move freely in and around the country,” Kebba Macoumba Njie noted.
The TTAG SG continued that The Gambia is currently classified under the traffic light coding system in the amber list that is deterring visitors from coming to the country for holidays. Therefore every effort is needed to get the country out of the amber list to the green list so that visitors can have confidence to come visit the country.
Furthermore, he said government should continue to encourage people to take the vaccine noting that it is encouraging that the number of infected COVID-19 cases is in the country is on decline and more than 10% of the population already vaccinated.
On his take on the conditions of small scale entrepreneurs in the tourism industry, SG TTAG advanced that Covid-19 pandemic has rendered the small scale enterprises bankrupt and financial intervention is needed to provide seed money to these group of operators to get them up and running again.
