By Yunus S Saliu
In less than 74 hours of the official commencement of the 2022/2023 winter tourism season in destination Gambia with the maiden flight of The Gambia Experience, the Corendon Airlines early hours of Monday, too, arrived with 127 tourists from Holland.
The Corendon Airlines flew direct from Holland to The Gambia with 27 passengers and will be doing one flight weekly, and will increase to two in November, and if no itches it will further increase the frequency.
Receiving the Corendon Airlines maiden flight of the season at the Banjul Airport International on behalf of the Director General of Gambia Tourism Board (GTBoard) was Adama Njie, director of marketing and was accompanied by other senior officers from the GTBoard and officials of the African Adventure Tours and Corendon Airlines in the Gambia.
Adama Njie said Corendon is among the big players in the market and it is good to have them while more maiden flights are expected in the just started season, “and the number of arrivals will change taking into consideration the numbers of the chartered flights for this season alone, twenty, compared to last season when we had 16.”
For the chartered flights to the country shifting from 16 to 20, he said, “it is a big margin and with that, the Europe number will go up. So we are optimistic about this season, based on our projection we will record more than what we had last year.”
Liane Sallah, CEO of African Adventure Tours and agent for Corendon Airlines in the Gambia gave an in-depth of their engagement with the tourists.
She disclosed that since Corendon Airlines’ inception in the country, it has been growing, very committed to the Gambia and they love the destination, “although, it’s been very difficult because of the Covid-19 which gives setback to tourism, mostly in The Gambia. We are building everything from the scratch now because last year’s season was horrible.”
Many people want to travel but she said the Covid-19 measure implemented in the country should review and cancel to allow more flights to the destination, especially since other competitor countries “like Senegal, Cape Verde among others have reviewed it and not implementing it anymore except the Gambia.”
Some of these countries, she said are competing with the Gambia so “if we want to have more tourists here they should scrap the Covid-19 measure so that visitors can come with PCR or their Covid-19 vaccination card because of no other mass tourism destination that is implementing it anymore.”