Strategies For Effective Tapping, Development And Marketing Of A Tourist Destination: A Case Study Of Uganda

Tourism is becoming the largest and fastest growing industry worldwide due to its increasing global recognition as an important sector with enormous potential to contribute to countries ’ socio-economic development. According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization (WTO) (2000), tourism plays a central role in propelling economic development, offering diverse opportunities for increased international and local investment contacts, foreign exchange inflows, domestic revenue collection and household incomes in both developed and developing countries. However, the WTO (2006), in its 2020 Vision for Tourism, observed that many developing countries are still grappling with the challenge of effectively and competitively tapping, developing and marketing their tourism industry both locally and internationally. Uganda is one such a country. Despite the tourism development and marketing efforts by the governments and private sector operators, the competitiveness of these country’s tourism products has not been realized as expected. As a result, tourist inflows are still below expected levels as projected by governments. They have many species of fauna and flora, topographic features, water bodies, scenic places, and a variety of activities and services whose potential as tourist attractions are either not developed, underdeveloped or not marketed at all. Many other physical environment features such as wetlands and green belts are getting destroyed yet they have high tourism potential (Anon, 2004b). There is therefore a need to effectively develop and market tourism. According to Gunn (1994), one of the ways through which this can be achieved is to develop strategic planning, especially when it is the one lacking in the industry, or if it exists, not effective and well focused