KENYA WINS AS TANZANIA IMPOSES TAXES ON TOUR OPERATIONS.

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN BY :
SUZAN KORUSAWA \ THE AUSTRALIAN.

During the West African ebola epidemic, which peaked in 2014, legions of travellers, spooked by the disease’s potential spread, cancelled holidays, particularly to East Africa, even though that popular safari region was far removed from the continent’s affected countries.

The safari industry has had to fight hard to re-establish consumer confidence but a swag of new lodges, major refurbishments and revitalised products, such as walking safaris and cruises on the Zambezi and Chobe rivers, indicate that bookings are on the rise.

Just when a return to financially healthy times appears imminent, key safari destination Tanzania is suffering due to rising costs for tourists. Billing itself as the largest online marketplace for African safari tours, Safaribookings.com claims the introduction 15 months ago of an 18 per cent value-added tax on previously exempt tourism services has caused operators in Tanzania to lose business. The VAT applies to ground transport and fees for guiding, camping and national park entry.

Jeroen Beekwilder of Safaribookings.com says “during the same period, Kenyan operators received a significant increase in booking requests” and there is an expectation of long-term problems for Tanzania’s wildlife tourism industry as visitors seek cheaper experiences.

Kenya Association of Tour Operators chief executive Fred Kaigua says the VAT impost in Tanzania is just one factor helping his nation’s tourism resurgence, citing other elements such as improved security in the wake of terrorist bombings in Nairobi, a government-led tourism recovery strategy, and the waiving of VAT on tours in Kenya.

Julie McIntosh, founder and director of Sydney-based Classic Safari Company, says: “Our business has seen a big rise in Africa generally and we are still sending a steady stream of clients to Tanzania. The average person would not be aware of any price increases as requests are usually a one-off (but) Tanzania is pricey because of the logistics involved in getting around, such as charter flights, and park and conservation fees make it more costly than Kenya, which offers great value and arguably more cultural diversity.”

Abercrombie & Kent Africa product manager John Saporito says: “Our safari bookings to Tanzania have remained strong and stable but there has been a noticeable increase in business to Kenya, which I attribute in part to the Tanzania VAT hike, but also the greater level of political stability (in Kenya). Despite what was predicted to be a disaster for the safari industry, so far the rise in Tanzania’s VAT has not had a significant effect on luxury safari operators.”

Perth-based Trevor Fernandes of Nairobi-headquartered family business Wildlife Safari is sceptical of the bleak findings of Safaribookings.com. He says his company’s Tanzania sales are up and there’s no diminishing of interest in visiting its headline attractions, such as Mount Kilimanjaro and Ngorongoro Crater Conservation Area. Other specialist operators point out the inextricable links between Tanzania and Kenya for tourists during the annual great migration when millions of wildebeest, accompanied by other herd species, move across national borders between the Masai Mara and the Serengeti National Park.

Also potentially affecting Tanzania’s tourism revenue, Beekwilder reports that operators in Uganda are citing an increase of more than 16 per cent in booking requests. But the industry widely believes this rise correlates with the decision last May by the Development Board of neighbour Rwanda to raise the cost of a “Gorilla Permit” from $US750 ($972) to $US1500 a person.

Aimed at boosting funds to sustain and strengthen conservation efforts and contribute more funds to communities living around the Volcanoes National Park, the impost in Rwanda has been a boon for rival trekking operators in Uganda, which offers comparable permits in Bwindi and Mgahinga national parks from $US450 to $US600 a person, depending on the season.

Intrepid Travel, as one example, will switch from Rwanda to Uganda for its gorilla experiences next year. Others are sure to follow suit as savvy tourists do their sums and seek the best-value African destinations.

SOURCE:

theaustralian.com.au

Comments

CUBA CLAIMS CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER IS FIDEL CASTRO'S SON.

The suicide note left by Fidel Castro’s eldest son has rocked the Cuban nation this week, with the most astonishing revelation being the claim that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was his half-brother and the son of the late Fidel Castro. The handwritten note left by Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, 68, the eldest of Fidel Castro’s children, appears to confirm the longstanding rumor in Cuba that Fidel Castro fathered Justin Trudeau after a public tryst with Margaret Trudeau in 1970. “ Castro Diaz-Balart, who had been attended by a group of doctors for several months due to a state of profound depression, committed suicide this morning ,” Cubadebate website reported. The death of the high-profile government nuclear scientist, also known as “Fidelito”, or Little Fidel, because of how much he looked like his father, stunned the nation, however it is his “ explosive ” suicide note that has set tongues wagging in Havana. Amid a wide-ranging barrage of complaint

MINERS IN NAMIBIA DISCOVER SHIPWRECK LOADED $13 MILLION WORTH OF GOLD.

Image: Dieter Noli. Diamond miners working off the coast of Africa were beyond surprised when they discovered a 500-year-old shipwreck teeming with gold worth $13 million and other treasures. The ship, aptly named ‘Bom Jesus’ or ‘Good Jesus,’ was like a miracle to the miners. Bom Jesus was first identified and discovered by geologists working for the mining company De Beers in 2008. It was found off the coast of Namibia near Oranjemund. Image: Dieter Noli. According to experts, Bom Jesus is from the Golden era of Portuguese explorers who set sail in all directions in search of new lands to colonize. The ship left Lisbon in 1533 under the supervision of Sir Francisco de Noronha. But on its way to India, it mysteriously vanished. Before the discovery, the miners were draining an artificial salt lake. As the lake dried out, many lost ships were found at the bottom of the lake. Bom Jesus was among them, and it is considered the oldest of all the shipw

LETHOTO'S PRIME MINISTER FACES IMPEACHMENT MOTION OVER HIS WIFE'S ACT.

Lethoto Prime Minister Tom Thabane & The first Lady Maesaiah Thabane. Maseru, LETHOTO: Lesotho's Prime Minister Thomas Thabane is facing a motion of no confidence for allegedly allowing his wife to meddle in government affairs, as political in-fighting rocks his ruling party and threatens the breakdown of his coalition government. The motion was filed in parliament this week by a member of Thabane's own ruling All Basotho Convention (ABC), raising the possibility he will call snap elections in the tiny mountainous southern African kingdom. "We hereby move a motion that this honourable house has no confidence in a government of Lesotho led by the Prime Minister Thomas Motsoahe Thabane," read a motion filed by ABC's Motebang Koma and seconded by the main opposition Democratic Congress deputy leader, Motlalentoa Letsosa. Parliament was adjourned on Monday with no date fixed for it to sit again. While the motion did not outline reasons fo

BEES 'ARRESTS' SUSPECTED THIEVES IN UGANDA.

Bees 'handcuffed' one of the suspects around the wrist, while another had the TV set reportedly stuck on his hands. Image: Daily Monitor. Kampala, UGANDA: Two burglars who are suspected to have stolen a television set in Sofiia village, Busia Town in eastern Uganda are in police custody after they were attacked by a swarm of bees. Like police would handcuff a suspect, a swarm of bees mobbed the hands of one of the suspects, while another reportedly had the TV set stuck on his hands as they returned the stolen items to where they had been picked from. Ms Rashida Jowelia, the owner of the property, said her TV set was stolen from her house last Friday, but she decided to seek the services of a medicine man in Sofia Village rather than report the matter to police. The suspects were identified as Wycliffe Kinara and Richard Duki, both Kenyan nationals from Nakuru. Bees 'handcuffed' one of them around the wrist, while another had the TV set reportedly stuck on his hands

HOW BOTSWANA NEW PRESIDENT SURPRISED THE WORLD BY APPOINTING 29 YEARS OLD WOMAN MINISTER.

The newly sworn in presidentof Botswana, Mokgweetsi Masisi has also sworn in his 18-member cabinet last Wednesday and making the list is the country’s youngest member of parliament Bogolo Joy Kenewendo. The 30-year-old economist, media commentator and policy analyst first joined parliament in 2016 as a specially elected MP by former president Ian Khama, and she is now the Investment, Trade and Industry Minister. Her appointment as a minister makes her the country’s youngest minister and one of few women to ever gain political leadership in the landlocked Southern African country. This feat has generated a lot of reaction from many young Africans on social media who were not only admiring her good looks, but rethinking the choice of older political leaders in their countries. One Twitter user EnviroMan from South Africa compared Bogolo to the women in his country’s cabinet who he described as Gogos – which means Grandmothers in the Xhosa language. “Get to

A 26-YEARS-OLD WOMAN ADOPTS 14 AFRICAN ORPHANS.

London, ENGLAND: A young British woman has become mum to a staggering 14 Tanzanian children she met after volunteering in an orphanage on her gap year. Letty McMaster, 26, was just 18 years old when a month-long trip volunteering at an orphanage in Africa changed her life forever. She ended up staying for three years to support the children she had met, and when the orphanage shut down, Letty took in nine youngsters who would have been left homeless. Seven years on, she lives with the children after becoming legal guardian to them ALL - as well as five more kids she met on the streets or at a safe house she runs. Letty McMaster. Letty, from Tunbridge Wells, Kent, said: "These children are my whole life, I raise them all on my own and they keep me going through the long hours of juggling everything. "I'd always had in mind that I wanted to help street children so my family and friends weren't surprised but I never expected to end up doing all this. " I am the pa

WOMAN ACCIDENTALLY SHOOTS A MAN IN THE HEAD WHILE SHOWING OFF ON FACEBOOK LIVE.

Houston police are investigating an incident where a man was accidentally shot in the head in a car. Three people were inside the vehicle in a petrol station carpark around 2:30am after Easter Sunday. A Facebook Live video was recording the two people playing around with two handguns, however, at one point, victim Devyn Holmes could be heard saying: "You're making me nervous." Another person replied: "It ain't got no clip, bud." Holmes tried to stop Cassandra Damper from waving the gun around the in car while she was talking about 'lying ass hoes'. He asked Damper where she's from and she replies: "Say something bitch". Seconds later the trigger was pulled and 26-year-old Holmes was shot in the head. Image: Jam Press. A CCTV camera captured the moment Damper and the other man jumped out of the car before several people who heard the commotion came over to see if they could help. Police and emergency se

UGANDA ANNOUNCES "KILL THE GAYS" LAW IMPOSING DEATH PENALTY TO HOMOSEXUALS.

Kampala, UGANDA: Uganda has announced plans to impose the death penalty on homosexuals. The bill, colloquially known as “Kill the Gays” in Uganda, was nullified five years ago on a technicality, but the government said on Thursday it plans to resurrect it within weeks. The government said the legislation would curb a rise in “unnatural sex” in the east African nation. “Homosexuality is not natural to Ugandans, but there has been a massive recruitment by gay people in schools, and especially among the youth, where they are promoting the falsehood that people are born like that,” the country’s ethics and integrity minister, Simon Lokodo, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Our current penal law is limited. It only criminalises the act. We want it made clear that anyone who is even involved in promotion and recruitment has to be criminalised. Those that do grave acts will be given the death sentence.” Mr Lokodo said the bill, which has the support of the co

EGYPTIAN VILLAGE WHERE MOSQUE WAS BOMBED HAD BEEN WARNED.

CAIRO (AP) : Elders of a village in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula where militants killed 305 people in a mosque had been warned by Islamic State operatives to stop collaborating with security forces and to suspend rituals associated with Islam’s mystical Sufi movement, security officials and residents said. The latest warning came as recently as a week ago, telling villagers in Al-Rawdah not to hold Sufi rituals on Nov. 29-30 to commemorate the birth of the Prophet Muhammad, according to residents and the officials who work for security and military intelligence agencies operating in Sinai. Local operatives of the Islamic State group’s affiliate in Sinai consider Sufis to be heretics who should be killed. Ahmed Saqr, an expert on the Sinai insurgency, said militants had publicly identified the mosque, which also serves as a Sufi center, as a target months ago. He wrote on Saturday in a Facebook post that the selection of the Al-Rawdah mosque as a target “raises questions about tho

STUDY SHOWS "DTP VACCINE" KILLS MORE BABIES THAN IT SAVES.

A shocking 2017 study published in Ebiomedicine (a peer-reviewed open access online-only medical journal) reveals that the DTP vaccine kills ten times more babies than it saves. Researcher Søren Wengel Mogensen examined the mortality rates of infants between the ages of 5 and 5 months who were given early vaccinations for DTP (Diptheria-Tetanus-Pertussis) and OPV (Oral Polio Vaccine). They found that there was a 10-fold mortality rate compared to infants who did not receive the vaccine: Results Among 3–5-month-old children, having received DTP (± OPV) was associated with a mortality hazard ratio (HR) of 5.00 (95% CI 1.53–16.3) compared with not-yet-DTP-vaccinated children. Differences in background factors did not explain the effect. The negative effect was particularly strong for children who had received DTP-only and no OPV (HR = 10.0 (2.61–38.6)). All-cause infant mortality after 3 months of age increased after the introduction of these vaccines (HR = 2.12

Kioo17 Journal

Search This Blog