Tanzania starts verifying licenses for tourism businesses

The rock restaurant

Tanzanian authorities said they have started verifying registration certificates and licenses of firms that are engaged in tourism businesses in the east African nation. “The move is aimed at identifying and removing all unregistered and unlicensed firms from doing the tourism business,” said Gaudence Milanzi, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism.

“Unregistered and unlicensed firms had been linked to incidences of fraud including conning and causing unnecessary inconveniences to tourists. Such incidences were tarnishing Tanzania’s image to tourists around the globe,” he said in a statement.

The government was  issuing registration forms to tourist firms for 2018, warning that those seeking to register should provide valid and accurate information. The 2016 International Visitors’ Exit Survey Report indicated that the number of tourists who visited the country, east Africa’s second largest economy, continued to rise.

The report showed that Tanzania hosted no less than 1,284,279 tourists in 2016, compared to 1,137,156 in 2015, which was an increase of 12 per cent. The report showed revenues from the tourism industry have been increasing year after year with 2.1 billion dollars in 2016 against 1.9 billion dollars in 2015. According to government data, tourism has been Tanzania’s largest foreign exchange earner since 2012, contributing an average of 2 billion dollars annually, which is equivalent to 25 per cent of all exchange earnings.