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A conversation with Amos Wekesa on why ‘direct flights to UK’ is good news

Uganda Airlines soon landing in London. FILE PHOTO AIRBUS MEDIA

 

SPECIAL FEATURE  | THE INDEPENDENT | Amos Wekesa, who has invested heavily in tourism, took to X yesterday, with a comment on why reports that Uganda Airlines has secured direct flights to the UK, could be a turning point for the sector. In his tweet, he said “we need to reflect on ourselves as a country and my write up should make us understand why!”

Well, X being X, he got some rebuttals, and here below is it all

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Uganda Airlines to soon land at London Gatwick

WEKESA: For a long time, Uganda didn’t have a single direct flight out of any European city, the few flights out of Europe had to pass elsewhere before landing in Uganda.

That partly explains why Tanzania for example will get 1.8million tourists from Europe in a year and Uganda less than 40,000. That’s less than 2.5% of what Tanzania does.

It is well known that in adventure tourism business or general business travels, travelers will travel more to countries with direct flights plus easy visa access

Of course, the major setback for Uganda is the little interest in Marketing or positioning Uganda itself by those in responsible positions as the figures themselves show!

When marketing or branding happens, airline companies across the globe pick interest in your country. It is because travelers who are also called spenders, will create the demand – they will create what Airlines call ‘bums on seats’.

UK is still our biggest source of tourists annually from Europe but we get less than 12,000. In fact we got just above 11,000.

Germans were our second with only 4,860, French 3rd with 3,002 only. Now, compare that to what Tanzania gets.

Tanzania got 111,000 French tourists, Germans were 93,000, 34,000 Dutch, while on this one, we got 2,700 only.

Imagine each spent a conservative figure of $3,000 – do the math.

Kenya is still the big boy in the region.

These days, we are being discouraged from comparing figures. Some people don’t want us to compare figures with our neighbors in the south.

They forget that the reason we compare figures, is because we aren’t living in isolation. If I am a tourist in Europe, I have over 196 countries to choose from.

Why do we stand out as a country to be chosen?

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John Ejalu: Don’t forget that this is not the first time Uganda will have direct flights out of Europe. There are many precedents – failures.
WEKESA: I know we have had flights before and the last one was british airways. They used to bring a 189 seater plane and had an average of 169 pax per flight but didnt want to pay anything at entebbe There arent many factors, its only positioning that we dont understand
Emmanuel Odong Kilara: Opening up more routes is good only if it is strategically utilized. If we fail to harness the power of direct flights, tourists will fly direct to Uganda then they will fly to our neighbors. I think Tanzania receives more European tourists than the number of international tourists Uganda receives. Uganda has a lot of work to do.
WEKESA: Thats true, i have over and over told them marketing is very key when opening routes but as a people we dont appreciate it
Jacob Lumundu: Have they done research on why British Airlines cancelled the Entebbe to Heathrow route. Recall that it was only once per week. So four per week to Entebbe alone is quite ambitious considering KLM, Brussels and Turkish airlines combine Uganda and Rwanda as one destination.
WEKESA: BA didnt close because of lack of business and wasnt once a week. They always brought in a 189 seater plane and had 169 average bums on the seats but they didnt want to pay anything at entebbe airport
Raymond: Good market analysis. You can’t make good business plans without using figures and projections including looking at numbers of your competitors. H. E @KagutaMuseveni calls it “ekyibaro”. English can’t make business sense without numbers.

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