Uganda’s Safari and tour operators along with the Association of Hotel owners together disregarded the figures that the Ministry of Tourism presented regarding development within the sector for 2015. Someone actually said that the figures presented are a “pure fantasy” and not close to the real truth which is on ground.
During the review of this report they criticized the ministry of Tourism for having released that kind of figures without first consulting with the private sector to find out if the data included in the report were precise, attracting more criticism from primary stakeholders within the tourism sector.
Having looked at the raw data during the course of the year regarding occupancies within the hotel business, where the hotels upcountry were hit-hard after the introduction of VAT – Value Added Tax for the present financial year – something that the Ugandan President – Yoweri Kaguta Museveni pledged to change during his meeting with the investors at the annual Investors Round-Table a couple of weeks back – it actually appears that a number of fundamental errors could have crept into the real official data, as the figures observed were less than half the actual occupancy figures within the presented report.
The circumstance of the hotels upcountry took became worse, after the sudden increase in the VAT to be paid further reduced the demand for accommodation within and near the national parks across the country.
Another stakeholder suggested that the Uganda Wildlife Authority should publish the updates about regarding gate entries into the different parks in a timely way with comparison to some of the couple of years in the past, so as to ascertain the exact number of tourists normally referred to as ‘foreign nonresident guests’.
Another commentator added that this kind of data might help to establish how the processed data from the ministry translates into the respective park entries for the tourists.
It is said that the key leaders within these sectors seriously criticized the presented data, putting official departments within the government on notice to evaluate their report and provide clear evidence of how this data was arrived at, or to revise the report and reflect the exact situation on ground. The stakeholders went to request for an illustration of where this kind data was discussed as well as interpreted in order to avoid this kind of situation ever arising again in the years to come.
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