Royal Tour Film: Is Tanzania Prepared?

Abstract

Since independence in 1961, there have been efforts to promote the country’s abundant tourism attractions and investment opportunities with little success. Of recent, Tanzania and rest of the world were severely hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Tourism and foreign direct investment were some of the sectors which were badly affected. Tanzania the Royal Tour film, was among the sixth Government Regime’s initiatives that aim to revitalize the tourism. However, the question is on the preparedness among the tourism players towards the anticipated effects of Tanzania the Royal Tour Film. The study employed both qualitative and quantitative methods, involving 117 tourism respondents who were conveniently drawn from over 1200 tourism stakeholders in the sub- sectors of accommodation (25), tour operators (32), tourism investors (18), tour guiding (32), and arts and crafts (10), among others. The data gathered were processed and analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. Qualitatively, the researcher first translated and categorized them into various themes and sub-themes basing on the research objectives and research questions in both FGDs and in-depth interviews guides. Data from the in-depth interviews were transcribed and analyzed using thematic data analysis. Verbatim quotes were used to illustrate points of views during preparing this report. SPSS version 20 was used to analyse the quantitative data. Thisstudy revealsthat there is inadequate awareness of the expected impact of the Royal Tour Film among the tourism players, leading to lack of preparedness for receiving, hosting and handling massive numbers of tourists in the country. The study also found that majority of tourism players face serious capacity issues, especially in managing large numbers of visitors, especially international tourists. Furthermore, it has been established that the majority of tourism players have little understanding of the legal and policy issues governing tourism and hospitality services in the country. In view of these findings, there is need for the government in collaboration with the private sector, and other tourism stakeholders to jointly work together to mitigate these gaps in order to ensure Tanzania destination maintains its competitiveness in the world. Future studies may focus on the need for examining the capacity gaps amongst the Tanzanian Missions abroad, which are paramount for successful implementation of Tanzania the Royal Tour Film. Also, another research may tend to identify and profile non-traditional tourist attractions in the country for inclusion into the next versions of the Tanzania the Royal Tour Film and other future initiatives