Healing Malawi’s limping tourism

There is some good news about tourism from the Ministry of Tourism and Culture.

Chrissie Chiumia, the ministry’s spokesperson, says last year, tourism contributed an estimated 4.7 percent (about K49 166.2 million) towards the national economy, and that it is expected to grow by an estimated 8 percent this year.

“However, the combined direct and indirect impacts are estimated to be bigger. In 2012, this impact was estimated to have generated almost K96 645.5 million almost 9.4 percent of GDP and estimated to grow by 7.5 percent in this year,” she says.

In fact, President Joyce Banda—whose government has placed tourism as one key strategic sector to help anchor the Economic Recovery Plan (ERP)—wishes to place Malawi among the top 50 countries in the world as best tourist destination by 2015.

But the reality of Malawi’s tourism cast a deep dark shadow.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) 2013 Travel and Tourism Competitiveness (TTCI), for instance, ranks Malawi on position 124 from 121 in 2011. In 2012, again, Malawi’s tourism earnings dropped by 14 percent.

Fusing the president’s dream and the reality on the ground, Sam Botomani, executive director of Malawi Tourism Association (MTA), argues that in terms of growth, Malawi’s tourism is not moving in the right direction.

“The disappointing thing is that even those issues that we have identified as quick wins have not been acted on in time,” he said.

His thoughts are echoed by Bywell Mtegha, a Mzuzu University graduate of tourism.

“As a country, I doubt if we have exploited the potential of tourism; in fact, I may say we are still in the developing phase,” he says.

The tragedy of this is not necessarily the news that tourism has the potential to replace tobacco as the country’s main foreign exchange earner. Rather, as Mtegha suggests, Malawi has a rich but untapped culture, virgin natural resources and enormous wildlife—a range of tourist activities which can cater for a wide range of tourism niches.

He mentions the Cape Maclear and Chongoni Rock Art, which are Unesco World heritage sites, as examples of tourist attraction areas the country can capitalise on.

“We have a diversity of cultures which have also evolved with their own distinctive traditional rituals, arts, music. Can we not utilise these tourism assets and see some form of tourism sprouting?” he says.

He adds: “Malawi has breathtaking mountains, beautiful waters and diverse terrain which are happily married to a climate suitable for outdoor activities. All these provide a good platform for surfing, hiking, mountain biking, river rafting, diving, horseback safaris, safari walks and so on. We really have room for adventure and sports tourism in Malawi.”

The question, then, is: why is Malawi failing to utilise these opportunities?

Mtegha—who underlines that inadequate infrastructure development is frustrating tourism in the country—says lack of political will as a critical challenge.

“We often say tourism is among the top priorities in our development goals but little is done on the ground. Just look at the monthly budget allocations to departments responsible for tourism development. The funds are hardly enough to make big strides in tourism development,” says Mtegha.

He also takes a swipe at what he calls government’s poor planning.

“I feel that tourism is not well planned and developed at grassroots level. That is why we usually hear officials say ‘there is lack of civic education targeted at local communities to improve perceptions of tourism’,” he says.

He adds: “If we took a ‘bottom-up’ approach to tourism planning, such that local communities are involved from the very beginning, improved perceptions of tourism would have been achieved by the end of the planning process.”

Chiumia concurs with Mtegha and adds that lack of direct flights from key spots also affects Malawi’s tourism.

“Tourists would want direct flights. The industry has also seen cases of inadequate and often limited incentives to stimulate growth of the sector,” she says.

In terms of addressing the challenges of the sector, Botomani argues that his association has in recent years championed the facilitation of issues such as green and red routes at Malawi international airports, the granting of visa at ports of entry, the synchronisation of policies that affect tourism and the reorganisation of the Department of Tourism to create a specific body to market Malawi.

However, according to Chiumia, some of the issues affecting tourism in the country are being addressed through the ERP.

“The ERP covers all areas of tourism focusing on destination marketing, cultural development and improvement in attractiveness of our wildlife reserves to attract more tourists.

“Government has, in the current financial year, earmarked substantial resources for destination marketing where the major focus is to raise awareness of Malawi in selected key source markets through both online and offline strategies,” says Chiumia.

She explains that before the end of the year, the ministry plans to run a series of tourism adverts on some international media channels, both print and electronic.

“The ministry is also undertaking a number of operator and media educational trips from our major source markets in the UK, Holland, Germany, China, RSA and other markets. This will help the writers and our operators get a better understanding of our product to enable them to package Malawi in their respective promotional platforms,” she says.

According to her, since the ministry started implementing some of the issues in the ERP, there has been progress.

“There has been an increase in new investment projects in the sector such as conferencing tourism. The amount of jobs has also increased together with revenue collected from the sector,” she says.

Mtegha says the Tourism Department should consider raising the profile of the tourism industry in Parliament and Cabinet to ensure that relevant government departments understand the importance of the sector.

“This would enhance coordination and consideration, such as budget allocations, for tourism when other government departments are developing and implementing their strategies.

“Secondly, we need to realise that for a tree to grow well, it must have strong roots. It is therefore necessary to focus on developing domestic tourism as the backbone of tourism development by introducing destination management organisations (DMOs) within Malawi,” he suggests. n