Tourism: A key sector in Rwanda

Rosette Rugambwa is the Executive Director for the Rwanda Office for Tourism and National Parks (ORTPN). The Monitor’s Raymond Kalema and Muhereza Kyamutetera, talked to her about the performance of the industry. Below are the excerpts.

Rwanda participated in the recent ITB Berlin  Exhibition where she became the fourth, beating other traditional African rivals like Kenya. What does this mean for the tourism industry in Rwanda?
First of all, I would like to clarify that when we go for trade fairs it is really part of our marketing strategy; that we have access to international trade fairs that are actually good i.e. the London and Berlin versions. Rwanda safaris

We are out to be seen and have a big presence to address our image problem and also create opportunities for sale.

In London they don’t give awards but though it might not be important to anybody else, for us it is, because we only re-launched our tourism sector in 2003. We used London as a platform in November 2003 to tell the world that Rwanda is open for business.

Now 2005 is the year for the Genocide 11th commemoration so we didn’t expect a big turn-up. We were very determined and very confident of our product. Not only were we confident at ITB but we were we able to fund ourselves as well.

Of the 180 countries that came to exhibit, we were recognised as the fourth from within the African continent. And the year before, we were number seven.
We were very happy because they mentioned us among the first 10 in the continent. Rwanda gorilla safari

So its a statement of confidence and secondly, it means that we are actually doing things right. It also adds to the publicity and positive image that we are looking for. Thirdly it emphasises that when the government when decided to choose tourism as the key economic driver, they did not get it wrong because it is paying off. It is no secret that tourism will continue to excel and become one of the key economic drivers. If we can beat Kenya safari, then we can beat South Africa safari and that will be a big moment for us.

What are you doing to maintain the status quo or even improve it?
We are mindful of the fact that government has chosen tourism as one of the key sectors. This gives us a big responsibility. We have now started putting in place our strategies in line with the 2020 Vision. We have the tourism working group and a strategy firm called On the Frontier to put up that strategy and we have decided to use the year 2010 as a mid-term target. That is when we shall evaluate the tangible benefits we have made. We have told the government that we are targeting at generating a minimum of US $100m in direct and indirect receipts coming from tourism as revenue, by 2010.

How did you arrive at that?
It was basically to say that if we can get about 70,000 visitors by 2010 with each spending a minimum of US $ 1,500 per week, we get US $ 100m. We said that was very achievable. So every year, we have given ourselves a target of visitors that we expect and we have achieved those targets.

But what we are looking for in Rwanda is not the numbers but the length of stay. It is really what makes it for us. We are able to learn from our neighbours like Kenya. We were actually able to look at what happened in Mauritius and Kenya in 1995. Mauritius and Kenya had before generated US$ 500,000 but Kenya safari had received 800,000 visitors and Mauritius had 80,000 visitors. So it is that kind of tourism that we are looking for in Rwanda. It’s a small country and we are going for eco-tourism. We are looking for high-end tourism and our bottom line is going to be working on the length of stay. We want limited numbers that are staying for a long time and thereby increasing the receipts.
So we will be able to put less pressure on our resources, conserve our environment, and also be able to address the current issue of making sure that the benefit of tourism in terms of money is actually visible.

How is the competition like especially with rivals Uganda and Kenya?
First of all our strategy is not to out compete other countries. Rwanda’s strategy is to become an added destination. We want to become a compliment to the region. That is our initial strategy and we will see how it evolves. Clearly, that was dictated by where we came from. We are not expecting people to fly directly into Rwanda. Our strategy is to position Rwanda as a complimentary destination to the people who are already coming into the region.
That is working very well for us even with the products that we have. For instance one of the best African safari packages that sells, between Kenya and Rwanda is that people are actually saying they want to start with the Masai Mara and end with the gorillas. Or start with Rwanda gorilla safaris and end with the Masai Mara tours. In terms of tourism it becomes one trip.

Analysts say Kenya has outsold itself and in terms of this they really need something new to offer. When they approach clients and say they can add Rwanda to the destination, it is easy for them to sell. It becomes a win-win situation because we were able to tap into the clients that were already coming into Kenya which is already a well-known destination. So that is really what we have done It is the same thing with Uganda safari and Tanzania tours.

ORTPN has in place a new tourism strategy. Can you briefly tell us about it?
I think in a summarised way, a strategy is a driving tool that you use. If you have a mission/vision, the strategy is actually the tool that gets you to that specific mission. So what we have set are the goals we want to achieve.
We looked at our country in terms of what we wanted to achieve, in terms of natural endowments and we were comfortable with what we have. But for us in Rwanda, it’s not just about natural endowments. Tourism is taken as an image builder, where we are coming from. And thirdly, it yielded a really quick solution to our poverty problem. That is why we have to bear all that in mind when we are trying to put up a strategy, to make sure that it addresses this issue of poverty and the image issue- to tell people that despite what happened, we actually have a beautiful country.
The poverty issues are to be addressed by the US $100m that I told you we are targeting. The image issue is addressed in that when you stop talking about genocide and you talk about tourism it is a complete contrast. If we showcase Rwanda, we really are unveiling it to the world; that it is not just with the gorillas but it is really a beautiful country that was just unfortunate to be known for the wrong reasons.
So that is the reason we put a lot of money towards marketing. And in terms of the new strategy, the component that we really put in was aggressive marketing, that is, going to trade fairs and having a state-of-the-art website to make sure that people are writing travel guides so that anybody who wants to come to Rwanda is able to access it.

We do a lot of course and tour operator familiarisation trips to make sure that we bring people here to see Rwanda in order for them to be able to sell it. These are the things that we use in terms of marketing.
In terms of institutional development, we knew that in order to spearhead the tourism industry we had to restructure the organisation-ORTPN and we needed to make sure that the private sector in fact would lead.
Right now the public sector has been leading in terms of a very strong tourism board. The private sector is still very weak and we are hoping that it will be like other countries where the private sector is leading in the tourism industry.

So we just have to give them guidelines in terms of strategy and training. We are putting up training schools for institutional development as part of our strategy. In order to get the US $100m we have to work on marketing, institutional development and product development.

If you asked about Rwanda, actually the people know about the gorillas before they know where the country is. So our challenge is, how do we diversify our product? In order to achieve the US $100m revenue, we have to make sure that the length of stay has to be extended. We are aiming for people to be staying for seven days by the year 2010.

As we speak now the average stay is between five and seven days and we are very confident that by the end of this year and next year people will be staying for an average of seven days.

First you can’t do it unless you tell people, come and see the gorillas, see and know our culture, visit Nyungwe and do something on the lake. We have to create activities that will allow people to stay for seven days. Once you put them in place you must communicate those activities. Make sure the tour operators know the products we have so that people know and they don’t ask how come you didn’t tell us the country is this beautiful, we have already booked two days and yet there is a lot to be seen.

Given all this aggressive marketing, what has been the performance of the industry?
I think last year was fine, but I must say cautiously that we don’t have capacity yet to capture all tourist statistics. We are relying on park visitors as something that we are very confident about. We are working very hard to make sure that we get the overall visitors.
We don’t have statistics for people who don’t go to the national parks. Why we are confident about giving the statistics of the national park is because the biggest number of visitors do not leave without visiting the national parks. This is why we think this is an indication of the minimum number of people who have been in the country.
These figures should reflect the eco-tourists, the explorers who don’t want to go to the national parks, the individual business people, those who just come around to visit friends and relatives. We are working very hard to capture all this data but in the mean time we are using the park statistics. We use them as indicators, for example by end of 2003, 16,942 people had visited the protected areas. And we saw this jump to about 26,658, which is almost a 67 percent increase. That is really a good indicator.

We even go down to the people who do the Rwanda gorilla trekking and we find out what the trend is because the biggest percentage of international visitors go to see the gorillas. We are looking at these figures and monitoring the figures to see if we were realistic with the 70,000 visitors because the strategy is not really meant to be static. The strategy is just to give you a working document or a guideline. 2005 and 2006 are going to be very critical years that actually tell us what the proper are. Because we are aiming at 30,000 visitors by the close of this year.

The Great Lakes Region is still thought of as insecure especially by the tourists. Is this affecting you?
Yes and no but I think it is basically more in the trend of the world. There have been lots of travel warnings for a very long time and tourists are no longer respecting them as they used to. We have had some short term local ones, affecting our visitors but we have recovered very quickly.

I am basing on what happened last year and what happened at the beginning of the year, when they put a heavy travel warning for the Virunga, which has now been lifted, which is good. We also have a ban on Nyungwe, which is still there. For the first time travelers it is really very serious, and sometimes we don’t know the ones that we have not been able to capture.

But luckily for us, we are not looking for big numbers. We are still able to handle that. And also because we have positioned our country as a country of adventure, we can trap people who are looking for adventure. So they are less cautious. Before they come to the country, they discover what we have done. They do not go to a country that they don’t know about. Most likely they will have done a lot of research and probably talk to somebody who has been there, who can tell them the truth who are well traveled and know that you can go to a destination where there are so many things.

I think that what happened in the US or the problems that they had on 9/11 has shown that things like that can happen but the reality on the ground shows that people can continue with their lives. So the world kind of opened up.

But I must say that it is something that will continue affecting countries and it is sometimes very difficult to battle with. But my strategy here is to keep telling people the truth. You can’t fight the travel warnings. The only way you can do it is that while they are positioning themselves, they have a job to do, they have to advise their citizens. You also have a job to do.

Tell them how you see it, you must have a window, a website that is dynamic, keep on updating people. You have to put a lot of money in PR, in marketing. You have to be visible. Information has to be accessible so that whoever wants to get it can be able to get it when it is updated. You have to use the media, the embassies people that can give you a guide to the current information.

There is a growing shift from conventional tourism to more specialised packages like community tourism. Is Rwanda making adjustments to also cater for this class?
I think community tourism is very enterprising. A lot of people are asking for it and a lot of people do not understand what community tourism is.

What did Rwanda do?
One thing that we agreed on is that if you are an eco-tourism destination you must make sure you show your natural endowments, you make sure that the people who come to see them, are happy that you are preserving the environment. You also make sure that they have access to the local community and that’s really why we went for eco-tourism, because we had all the ingredients like other nations. Rwanda tours

How do you do that without the local community?
It must be something you do very cautiously, otherwise you will think you are doing community tourism and you are actually not. Until recently, tourism development was complicated. It used to be in protected areas and the people who used to benefit were people who travelled to protected areas, the private sector and the national economy but the locals didn’t benefit. So it is a trend that the world is now realizing.

Actually these local communities that we are talking about are the custodians of the natural endowments, so if they are not benefiting then you have a problem. They will not see the importance of protecting the national parks, protecting the environment so you must have a conscious approach that really benefits the community. In doing that, in Rwanda, we said we are not experts, but we need to set up guidelines.

We commissioned a consultant who came to Rwanda and helped set up guidelines, which were set up in collaboration with the community. So we actually started within the protected areas asking how do we involve the community? We had to start by setting up sensitisation. We have to talk to them, so they understand what you are trying to do because this will be a collaboration effort. So right now we have just finished with the guidelines so that anybody who wants to get involved in community tourism, will have guidelines to follow. Rwanda Safaris

As a tourism board we have decided in order for the community to see the benefits of tourism, there must be an aspect of revenue sharing by giving a percentage to them. Until recently we have been giving 10 percent of revenues collected from the national park back to the communities living in the protected areas but that is going to be reviewed. Then they can see the benefits of protecting these resources. We have sat down with all the people living in the protected areas with their local leaders and said which project can we support? So in certain places we have put water sources, schools dispensaries, some revenue generating projects like bee keeping, handicrafts and so on and so forth.
This is something we have done in collaboration with other stakeholders that are operating in these areas e.g. NGOs

A very visible project we are going to do is to set up a community lodge. The communities are going to be part owners in Ruhengeri. It is going to be called Sobinyo Community Lodge, a partnership between the community, public institutions i.e. ORTPN and a private sector i.e. the Governance Camp in Nairobi which is the firm that won the contract to be the private sector runner of the project.

The private sector is going to bring skills of running one of the best lodges in East and Central Africa and they will put in funding.

ORTPN is going to be the custodian to make sure that the communities are catered for; all the guidelines are supported and followed and IGCPT, which is the NGO in the project as a neutral body and also as a funding body. And the community will benefit directly in terms of employment and so on and so forth – African Safari

That is already on going and is going to be a role model to see how we can go on with the other projects.
The other thing we have done is provide legal access to the protected areas. The communities that live around these protected areas go for firewood, water and herbs from there.

So what we have done is to say we will allow them this access to water and all the others you are getting from the protected areas but in a designated area or portion. They can plant and do whatever they want in that area and that you can take up to so much and not beyond in a specific period. So there is specific understanding and the places are managed properly.

What is the bottom line?
Nations are developing. The relationship in the years before between the communities and the protected areas was policy. We were like a police; if you do this I will punish you.

But now it is about collaboration or partnership and partnership can only be appreciated with all the things that you must do together for example, if you are building a buffalo wall, then you say fine, we are putting up the wall so the animals don’t cross over and eat the crops in your garden, but while we are doing that we will put a price. We say that the community will contribute towards labour. If your labour is Frw 500, we give you 250 and the balance is your contribution to the project. That are very important because you must show that you have involvement.

We don’t want to say that the national parks belong to us but they belong to the country. I want to emphasise that community tourism is very important and we want to take it seriously here and we want to see that when people visit any of our attractions, the communities around must benefit. If we have a COMESA Summit we must put a cultural village so that the participants visit and we bring them near to the local people so they benefit. It is no longer theory but we must make them work – Rwanda cultural safaris

You surely must have some challenges?
The challenges are big. We will start with airlifting. We have to look at the issue of having as many airlines coming to Rwanda and offering good rates. Because whatever effort you put in if people can’t fly into Rwanda it can’t work out.

Tourism is a cross cutting industry, it is not or cant be controlled by our organisation. If we don’t have hotels that have got good customer service, we don’t have the tourism culture that we are largely working on. We will not succeed. You must instil the tourism culture, which says, how do you receive visitors? How do the hotels know the needed levels? This is a very big challenge that we are working very hard on, with the Rwanda Bureau of Standards. We are working on sensitisation programmes through tourism associations. We are really using all channels possible to reinforce that tourism culture component. Hotels in Uganda

We are also working on training because after encouraging investors to come, as they build more hotels, they will have problems with staffing. We need to make sure that there is a training school here training the people who are going to work in all these hotels.

We are doing quite well if you think about how many hotels we have built in the last one year.
We need leisure centres. We have Lake Muhazi, which is very near for those who don’t want to go far. We need theatres where people can go for films. We still have a lot that can be done in this town. People have the money to spend but they don’t have where to spend it.
Information dissemination and documentation is another. You might go to the hotels and you might not even be able to get information on what to do outside that hotel.

Why aren’t the investors coming in big numbers?
I don’t think that is true. If you look at the figures and our history we are even surprised that people are coming in such huge numbers. If we launched tourism in 2003, it is because we had a very good laid out strategy by going direct to specific tour operators and not every one and we brought them here. We didn’t advertise in the papers, we targeted those who had the right business. We told them that if out of the 29,000 visitors they have, they gave us 10 percent of their data base we would be very happy. People came because they were being told by a tour operator they have trusted for years. There are certain things you do that accelerate tourism. For example if we didn’t have a Public Relations agency in London that is doing coordinated work we would not have been where we are.

When you are talking to the investor, an investor has a choice, a tourist will come targeting to spend $2000 or $3000 but an investor uses millions of dollars. He is looking for business and returns and he is not passionate about coming to Rwanda. You must prove that, or else they will go to other countries. You must have the right investment climate; give confidence to people that there will be security. Some of these things you can’t really control.

But I think investors are coming and lots of businesses have come in despite of all the constraints. Only that the numbers of visitors exceeded our expectations and the infrastructure was not ready. But everything possible is being done. In our tourism strategy, we thought we were going to do PR for four to five years before people come but the reverse is true. Now either the government has to come in or we wait for the investors. They will come and do a feasibility study, then ask for the figures which figures can’t be very good.

Right now I can’t take them to Nyungwe because I have no accommodation there but it is a very beautiful product. I have three investors already for the Virunga and two for Nyungwe. It is just that when they come to invest in Nyungwe I tell them look, I am an eco-tourism destination, I must be responsible. You must wait for me to draw up the guidelines. As I draw up the guidelines, that is not convenient for the investor. We are working out on all these but its not that we don’t have people coming to invest.