You can’t eat your cake and have it, so goes an old adage. This could be said about the situation unfolding in our country right now, especially in the Northern Tourist Circuit.
The situation within the northern Tanzania circuit which comprises Mwanza, Tanga, Mara, Kilimanjaro as well as Arusha isn’t very pleasing. It is an undeniable fact that most of the revenue acquired from the Tanzania tourism industry has for a very long period come from this northern circuit.
This kind of tourist destinations like the Ngorongoro Crater, Mt Kilimanjaro, Manyara as well as Serengeti among several others have drawn in nearly one million tourists into Tanzania every year.
However at the moment a dilemma has arisen within the Ngorongoro Crater. And it concerns the number of cars entering down into the crater. it has come to notice that the nearly four hundred cars that enter down to the floor of the crater have become rather very many to descent the step 610 meter walls.
The Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority – NCAA is for that reason thinking about ways of decreasing the number of cars that enter the crater, which currently stands as one of the biggest unbroken caldera in the world.
In accordance with the chief conservator of the NCAA Dr. Freddy Manongi, tourists have now and again complained the number of vehicles entering the crater is really big.
At the moment, the Nngorongoro Crater is attracting over 500,000 tourists every year and generating an estimated revenue of 55 billion Tanzania Shillings, a target being more than 60bn/- this 2014. They claim that the vehicles disturb them from experiencing and enjoying the beautiful natural scenery plus wildlife.
Granted, this has come up because of NCAA’s persisted rise on the popularity charts of the international travel business, however something has to be done to put an end to this denudation of this area. Putting in mind that the customer is often right, the authority need to do something to pay attention to the complaints of the tourists.
Based on the vision of NCAA, the matter of conservation of the crater is key: ‘A general tourism plan for the property is a long-term requirement, to guide the public utilization of this property and means of presenting this property, and to care most about the quality of the offered tourism experience, instead of the number of visitors plus tourism facilities’.
‘Access of Vehicles to the crater along with other well-known areas of this property needs clear restrictions to safeguard the quality of tourism experience of this property.’
The Ngorongoro not only has paleontological sites but also archaeological sites said to exist millions of years ago. The 4 main sites include Nasera Rock Shelter, Olduvai Gorge, Lake Ndutu site as well as Laetoli site. The variety as well as richness of the discovered fossil remains, including amazing fossils of early hominids, which have made it among the key areas on the planet to conduct research on the evolution of man.
Today, the NCAA has to change its tourism plan, balancing between the search for more income from tourism as well as preservation of the ecology of the crater, so important to comprehending the evolution of man. However, How to balance this equation is a frustration for each stakeholder within the tourism sector.