TZW
The Kenya-Tanzania border looked like a marketplace from last Thursday to Saturday, with hundreds of cars, buses and thousands of people passing through Namanga, causing all the immigration clearance desks as well as customs offices to be overwhelmed. According to officials at the post, the traffic was mostly one-way with travellers entering Tanzania.
The Chairperson of Tanzania Association of Tour Operators (TATO), Mr Willy Chambulo had earlier on stated here during the sector’s meeting that it was wrong to assume that all Caucasian people arriving in the country were tourists. “Most of these are researchers, some are expatriates.
We have volunteers and non-government workers, not to mention missionaries and those seeking investment opportunities.” Mr Chambulo, who also runs a tour company and number of tourist hotels, explained that out of the average 1.2 million tourists coming to Tanzania on annual basis, 535,870 are people hailing from countries within the African continent itself.
Kenya, as it seems, leads the pack by bringing here 198,000 leisure visitors, while Burundi follows with 48,210 tourists and Mozambique contributing around 45,000 visitors. Kenyans were reported to prefer spending their holidays in Tanzania, especially Arusha and Zanzibar, sampling the Northern Zone’s wildlife parks or lazing on the Isles soft sand beaches.
As it happens, Kenya, with nearly 200,000 Tanzaniabound tourists, tops the list among countries that bring more visitors here beating even the United States of America (USA) which sends here around 98,000 tourists every year.
The rest of 245,068 visitors, who usually arrive here from other African countries, according to the TATO official, come from Central Africa and South Africa, adding that if authorities want real and accurate figures of tourists they should consult tour operators not immigration officers.
Apart from US, other foreign visitors coming to Tanzania hail from the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden and Denmark. Most of these prefer wildlife gazing through game drives in National Parks.