The sixth edition of the national and regional Swahili International Tourism Expo (SITE) concluded its business on Sunday evening.
The 3-day tourism exhibition brought hopes for tourism recovery in Africa after the COVID-19 pandemic and ended after successful interactions among key players in tourism from Tanzania, Africa and others from tourist source markets of Europe, Southeast Asia, and the United States of America.
After 3 years of postponement, SITE, which is now Tanzania’s leading annual tourism and travel trade exhibition, took place in the historical and commercial city of Dar es Salaam on the Indian Ocean coast.
The exhibition which kicked off last Friday attracted over 200 local exhibitors and 100 buyers from various countries including the Netherlands, United States of America (USA), India, South Africa, Algeria, Russia, Spain, Poland, Sweden, Japan, Oman, Georgia, Bulgaria, Pakistan, and the Ivory Coast.
Tanzania has targeted to raise tourism revenues to US$6 billion by 2025 through diversification of tourist products. This will be attained after reaching a target of 5 million tourist arrivals during the same year.
The just ended SITE exhibition aimed to promote Tanzania’s tourism to international markets, then facilitate the linking of companies based in Tanzania as well as Eastern and Central Africa with other such companies from other parts of the world including tourism professionals from global tourist markets.
They shared knowledge and experiences on the business and investment climate in Tanzania, along with sharing investment opportunities with potential investors from Africa and the world.
Tanzanian Minister for Tourism, Dr. Pindi Chana, said that the SITE event is helping Tanzania to bounce back after a 3-year hiatus caused by the COVID-19 outbreak. The minister further said that the number of buyers who had participated in the 2022 SITE had shot up to 170 from 40, while international buyers increased to 333 from the initial 24 when established 8 year ago. SITE was launched in 2014 and has over the years registered an increasing number of exhibitors and international buyers.
