Uganda’s foreign affairs ministry has announced that announced that the third edition of the Uganda-Kenya coast tourism conference, Fam trips, excursions, and exhibitions slated for Kampala will take place between November 9- 18 2024.
The annual Conference is organized by the Consulate General of Uganda in Mombasa in conjunction with tourism stakeholders in Uganda and the Kenya Coast, with an aim of consolidating networks, synergies, and diversity to maximize the tourism potential between Uganda and Kenya’s coastal region.
The event includes excursions at the Kenya Coast and a fam trip to Uganda, as well as business-to-business sessions to enable participants from both countries to meet and interact.
For this year, the event will be theme; “The Uganda- Kenya Coast Tourism Partnership: Promoting job creation, inclusiveness and sustainability.”
At a media launch held in Kampala on Wednesday, Amb. Paul Mukumbya, Uganda’s consul general in Mombasa said that the conference is expected to increase tourist arrivals and investments in the sector, joint tourism packages, and increased traffic on the Entebbe-Mombasa route operated by Uganda Airlines.
“The purpose is to promote complementarity between Uganda and Kenya’s coastal destinations which will lead to sector inclusion, job creation and sustainability. Kenya is Uganda’s biggest source market and Uganda is Kenya’s second biggest source market. This cannot be ignored,” Mukumbya said.
The conference, he added, comes on realization that Uganda and the Kenyan Coast have different tourism products which can complement one another.
Whereas Uganda has mountain gorillas, chimpanzees, cultural and religious tourism and Kampala night life, the Kenya Coast has beautiful beaches, marine tourism and historical sites.
According to Ms Pearl Kakooza, the chairperson of the Uganda Tourism Board, both Uganda and Kenya should be working to jointly collaborate on tourism other than compete between each other.
Ahead of the conference, the foreign affairs ministry announced that it had hired three top Kenyan online influencers to push the explore Uganda message and push for increased numbers of visitors and investments into the sector from the Kenya side.
The influencers have already visited some destinations like Murchison falls national park and the Ziwa rhino sanctuary.
One of the influencers, Ms Esther Akoth who also happens to be a tour operator said most Kenya tour agencies do not sell Uganda because they have no firsthand knowledge about the products to sell apart from mountain gorrillas.
“I think we have been selfish. Largely we have been selling only Kenya because we didn’t have a lot of knowledge of available Ugandan tourism products. The benefits of the Kenya Uganda tourism are immerse,” she said.
The Kenya Association of travel agents said that it would rally its members to join Ugandan counterparts in increasing the number of visitors on either side of the border.
Several other industry players called for joint and packages that will give a tourism a feel of Kenya and Uganda on the same interinary.