More than 44 per cent of Tanzania's land area is covered with game reserves and national parks. There are 16 national parks, 29 game reserves, 40 controlled conservation areas and marine parks.
Mount Kilimanjaro, the Roof of Africa, is also located in Tanzania. Tanzania envisages creating a friendlier tourism climate that would see the number of arrivals climbing from the current 800,000 to 1.6 million visitors annually by the end of this year.
This is encouraging news as the nation's share of earnings from tourism remains bleak. A few years ago, the then Deputy Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Mr Lazaro Nyalandu, said recently that while Tanzania has some of the best tourist attractions in the world, the number of visitors still remains low and national earnings from the sector unsatisfactory. This stark reality needs remedial action.
It is unthinkable that a country that has 16 attractive wildlife sanctuaries should fail to shunt in millions of lovers of nature. But while we praise the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism for its quest to double the number of tourist arrivals we tend to forget the stark fact that the nation has too few hotel beds and other facilities. And most of its feeder roads are impassable.
During peak tourism seasons, especially between June and November, tourist hotels fill too full and the nation falls embarrassingly short of beds. Tanzania has about 15,000 beds in tourism facilities against a requirement of 1.6 million.
The situation calls for a scramble to construct tourist hotels and other facilities if the target is to be met comfortably. Neighbouring Kenya has more than 28,000 tourist beds on the Indian Ocean coastline alone.
The city of Nairobi has more than 15,000. This means that Kenya, which logs 1.5 million tourist arrivals every year, will keep sprinting ahead in the tourism industry if too little or nothing is done to sell Tanzania as a tourist destination more vigorously.
Tanzania has dedicated more than 42,000 square kilometres, more than one third of its territory, a uniquely high proportion of land to the formal protection of its wildlife as National Parks and Game Reserves despite its growing population pressures.
On January 6, last year, The New York Times awarded Tanzania the 7th position among 45 top destinations to visit. The tourist industry currently supports 27,000 jobs and generates 25 per cent of Tanzania's foreign exchange.
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