Tourism sector looks at Covid through rearview mirror

Before their gorilla trekking expedition, Bwindi’s newest rock stars will let their hair down at Chameleon Hill Lodge. To get to the quaint lodge, the former Barça players will be travelling in tan Land Cruisers, which have been fitted out to take a beating and pose like they’re on an East African safari. The drive to Chameleon Hill Lodge is not for the faint of heart. The long, winding, potholed road, with a huge cliff as a backdrop, is sure to cause some serious jolts that will make your stomach churn. It’s even more terrifying when it rains heavily, which is common in this part of the world.

The bright rays of sunlight streaming through the skylight have left the dirt road sun-baked. This basically means that the drive to Chameleon Hill Lodge and then into the impenetrable forest is devoid of incident or fear. In the impenetrable forest, the former Barcelona players move with such rapid acceleration, showing – if there was any doubt – that they have not lost the agility that made them stand out in many football cathedrals in their heyday.

With the climbs relentless on the hamstrings and the descents devastating the knees, it’s easy to recall a strong flood of memories of Edgar Davids’ tireless field-to-field expeditions. After successfully tracking three silverbacks through a grueling four-hour trek, Davids wants more. The park ranger had mentioned earlier – rather casually – that the elephants delicately traversed the same route that the retired footballers had taken. He even showed them the droppings of a baby elephant. Quite a gigantic pile! Davids now wants to exhaust the possibility of tracking elephants. Not today, the guide smiles.

That was in December 2015, a little over four years before a tiny pathogen rocked Uganda’s tourism sector. Shortly before Covid-19 reared its ugly head, the UN World Tourism Organisation estimated global tourist arrivals in 2019 at an unprecedented 1.4 billion. That same year, a dataset from Uganda’s Ministry of Tourism, Wildlife and Monuments provided a measure of the distance the country had travelled. Tourist arrivals in Uganda totalled an impressive 1,542,620, the highest level ever.

The pandemic has not only threatened estimated tourism jobs worldwide, but also caused global inbound tourism to decline by 72 percent in 2021. Uganda has welcomed just 512,945 tourists this year.

The satellite account report, which the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (Ubos) jointly worked on and released with the Ministry of Tourism, Wildlife and Antiquities in November last year, shows that the country is starting to reap the benefits of a world consumed by wanderlust. In 2022, inbound tourism improved by 58.8 percent, with the number of arrivals increasing to 814,508.

“Of the 814,508 arrivals, 41,683 (7.7 per cent) were tourists (people from outside Uganda who arrived and left the country on the same day) and 772,825 (92.3 per cent) were overnight visitors (people spending the night in the country),” the satellite report revealed.

Although the peak of 2019 was still a ways off, with “tourists in Uganda staying an average of 7.4 nights in 2022 compared to 8.3 nights in 2019,” the green shoots of recovery were not lost on many. Visitor purposes ranged from reconnecting with friends and family (38.2 percent) to business (36.5 percent) to leisure (11.7 percent).

“Business tourists stayed for at least a week, while those who came to visit relatives and friends stayed on average longer than a week – 9.7 nights,” the report revealed.

Crucially, tourism exports in 2022 had a sense that was essential to their trade: a sense of raising money. 2.5 trillion shillings were collected in tourism receipts. Yet the 4.5 trillion shillings collected before the pandemic in 2019 is quoted cautiously — perhaps defensively — because it remains largely unchallenged.

A comprehensive study of tourism expenditure and motivations, covering its most basic dimensions, shows that inbound tourists spent twice as much on food and beverage services in 2019 (Sh1 trillion) than in 2022 (Sh499 billion).

“The top three products of inbound tourism expenditure are accommodation (39.3 per cent), food and beverages (19.4 per cent) and passenger transport (13.8 per cent) with a combined share of 72.5 per cent in 2022,” notes the Satellite Account report, adding: “This means that 72.5 cents of every dollar/shilling spent by inbound visitors is spent on accommodation, food and transport. The top products of inbound tourism in 2022 remained consistent with those of 2019.”

While reaching pre-pandemic levels is proving dauntingly difficult, there are more reasons to pull out all the stops. According to the 2021 National Labour Force Survey, the number of people in Uganda employed in tourism totals 610,806. That’s 5.7 percent of total employment in the country.

The passenger transport sector (including road, air, rail and water transport, as former Barcelona players who visited the area in 2015 can attest) accounts for 68.7% of tourism employment, followed by the food and beverage sector (21.8%), cultural services (5.2%), visitor accommodation (3.5%) and travel agencies and other booking industries (0.7%).

Clearly, although the pandemic has taken the wind out of its sails, the tourism sector looks set to remain the country’s driving force in the currency market. As the country’s national debt grows and eats into its foreign reserves, the sector will have to shift into higher gear. Just as Davids did during his decorated playing career.