Revelations in a World Bank study on tourist expenditure and motivation, indicating that tourists leave Uganda with 60 percent of their money unspent, show the deep damage that a razor-thin tourism value chain can inflict. The dataset lays out, with great granularity, how Uganda’s tourism sector has come up with a mixed win-loss record.
The wins are easy to make out. The losses? Not much so. To be specific, international tourists on average stayed longer in the country in 2024 (8.7 nights) compared to 2023 (7.6 nights). The tourists in question also spent more, shelling out, on average, $125 (Shs440,000) per night in 2024, up from $110 (Shs387,000) in 2023. Yet a comparative lens accentuated the fact that this is two times less than what an international tourist spends during each day spent in neighbouring Kenya.
This shows that if the work of players in Uganda’s tourism value chain regularly goes unheralded, perhaps, it is because they are not pushing the envelope. At least not hard enough, anyway. The business model of our tourism sector cannot be merely built on the beauty of a desolate landscape here and there. Or the Big Five game (lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant and African buffalo) that have come to typify an African safari. The thought processes have to avoid making the elementary error of being short-sighted.
Players that constitute the tourism chain, therefore, have to be intentional about making a strong case for the sector. This, in all honesty, should not be the Herculean task that many make it out to be. The sector’s impact, for one, is amplified through the economy because for every coin generated in direct tourism, nearly two coins arise, thanks to supply chain and consumer spending.
As well as articulating this to the country’s policy wonks, clearly and frequently, sector players should be alive to the fact that the value of tourism depends on how you do it. How, for instance, is Uganda attuned to the so-called hyperculture? Much more than the desolate landscapes and endangered species-like the mountain gorilla-that leave international tourists consumed by wanderlust, have we succeeded in creating a semblance of a global cultural pool in Uganda?
Where is the fusion food? Where is the fusion music?
Such fusion ideas that blend elements from different traditions-not just in culinary arts and music, but also technology and design-are what keep tourists plugged into a sales cycle. They are what will compel the tourist in question to spend that bit more during their stay in the country.
Travel is not just predicated on confronting your average tourist with the experience of the other.
While the mind-expanding shock of the new does still hold considerable sway, today’s hypercultural tourists do not entirely want to be met with an experience that is oddly too strange, risky or foreign.
To get tourists to spend more in Uganda, responsible authorities have to ensure the country’s tourism experience underwrites the correct mix between the exotic and the global.
Striking the right balance will go to considerable lengths to plug gaps in experiences, amenities, cultural products and creative add-ons that are not compelling visitors to loosen the purse strings.