The tourism sector of Uganda has declined in the marketing system because of the pricey campaigns like the Friend A Gorilla advertisement. This has been highly critized by Fideus Kanyamunyu in Kisoro although it has led to the coming of more visitors from the neighboring countries and from abroad.
According to last week’s workshop, the findings showed that the foreign visitors were not satisfied with services offered by the private companies such as lack of internet services in the hotel rooms and that they are charged a lot when they want to use charter planes to go visit some places therefore were criticized for their terrible services. The local aviation industry of Uganda is submissive because the visitors are charged a lot on the charter planes to travel to some places which is different from countries like South Africa and Kenya with a developed aviation industry.
It was also discovered that it would take five days to rescue a tourist that has been trapped at the Margherita peak on Mountain Rwenzori which is too long.
Mr. Ismail Ssekandi the chairman of Uganda Hotel Owners Association said some of the visitors that had planned to stay in his hotel changed their minds after knowing that there were no internet services in the hotel rooms. He also said Kenya uses 48 billion shillings a year to market its tourism places and Uganda uses 2billion shillings therefore making Kenya to be better than Uganda in product marketing.
Amos Wekesa, the president of Uganda Tourism Association said Uganda has many effects holding back the development of the tourism sector for example there is lack of enough marketing skills, low capital, poor infrastructures and lack of enough government support and because of all the above, it hasn’t been able to compete with Kenya.
The State Minister for Trade, Nelson Ggagawala said the industry is now in the hands of the private sector sine the government has failed to solve the problems for the tourism sector.
