Recent article featured in the Travel Section of The Times. It's great to start hearing Sierra Leone mentioned in the same sentence with tourism (in a sort-of positive way) by reputable papers. This is an objective piece...
http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,10325-1900061,00.html
4 comments:
That is a good article about the budding tourism industry in Sierra Leone (objective from a strictly British point of view). Americans may look at the country a bit differently than the Brits of course as they would not be carrying any "colonial baggage" and are more upbeat and visionary.
The natural surroundings described in this article sound absolutely beautiful. Are there professional photo galleries online that show readers what the country really looks like in detail?
I noted that pricing for hotels and inns referenced in the article might put a vacation in Sierra Leone out of reach for the average European tourist accustomed to cheap package holidays to Turkey, North Africa, or Mallorca and Tenerife. According to my calculations the pricing starts at about USD $1330.00 (Euro €1110,00) per person.
"... Flights from £424 return. A package with three nights at the Country Lodge hotel, and four at Franco’s Guest House, costs from £764 per person, B&B, including flights and transfers." (Question: Is that first flight quote extra without the Package Plan?)
Additional airfare from the States or Canada TO London and then on to Freetown on top of the prices quoted above would place a vacation in Sierra Leone out of reach for the average North American family or couple, unfortunately.
Stakeholders in the Sierra Leone travel industry need to work on bringing those prices within the range of affordability for many more (interested) tourists around the world in my opinion. Acutally the same applies for all of West Africa. That will take some time, lots of cross-border cooperation, and plenty of serious financial investment in transportation and infrastructure.
You touch on some of the issues at the core of issues we need to address to move develop the tourism industry further. Accommodation costs are often high because of high overheads of which energy costs is a huge contributor. Most hotels have to generate their own power.. full or not.
With flights.. at the moment there are no direct flights from the states.. and not enough competition on the Freetown-London ruote. Some argue that the traffic is not there to support more than two airlines.. so that is a catch 22.
Images.. you can try our image gallery for a start. Lots of places you can get images of Sierra Leone. Not all pleasant though.
I agree on cross-border cooperation.. it is vital.. maybe even more vital for us now is cross-ministry cooperation in order that everyone works together for a common goal - putting a tourism strategy in place which will protect Sierra Leone, Sierra Leoneans and tourists.
I'm sorry to take so long in following up on this dialogue. Thanks for the response.
BBC News online has a Feb. 15th article about Javed Jafferji, a Tanzanian photographer who is famous for his pictures of the beautiful Indian Ocean island of Zanzibar. Jafferji's work has helped boost tourism on the island and on the Tanzanian mainland. See the BBC article at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4698604.stm
I noted in a search about Javed Jafferji's photography that a good beach hotel holiday on Zanzibar starts at around USD$ 675.00 per person for a 5 night stay. Here is the link to the Zanzibar.net site:
http://www.zanzibar.net/zanzibar/hotels/ras_nungwi
Again, much of the expense of a holiday there is eaten up by the cost of airfare from N.A. or Europe to Tanzania. Probably the only way to reduce airfare costs at present is to use a chartered flight plan subsidized by the government or some organization. Low airfares = more money to spend in country on vacation. Win-win for the tourism industry in Sierra Leone and other African nations.
My Husband comes from Sierra Leone but you try to book a flight in April and it is impossible, we are trying to get there as I have never been - only time I can go due to work committments - anyone have any ideas for a cheap flight. I have tried Astraeus & Kevin McPhillips - not much help there
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