Rwanda targets high-end tourist market

The challenge is getting tourists to make Rwanda their main destination, and spend more than the usual four days it takes to visit the gorillas and maybe the genocide museum before heading elsewhere.

“We want to keep it high-end as an anchor for tourism but provide other offerings,” said Akamanzi. She said tourism is already the country’s top foreign exchange earner, but believes they “have only scratched the surface”.

So the country, known as the Land of a Thousand Hills is looking into sports tourism such as cycling, cultural tourism and becoming a Big Five safari destination in its own right.

In the past two years Rwanda has re-introduced both lions and rhino to its Akagera National Park — which had gone extinct due to poor conservation — and visitor numbers to the reserve have doubled, said Akamanzi.

– ‘There will be an impact’ –

However gorillas remain the main lure, and industry players are concerned about the impact the price increase could have on the whole tourism chain.

“We risk losing substantial revenue for the industry and government as a whole. Currently a number of gorilla permits are already not sold in the low season,” the Rwanda Tours and Travel Association (RTTA) said in a statement after the decision was announced.

Mid-range hotels around the Volcanoes National Park say it is too soon to tell what the fallout will be, but several managers expressed concerns they would lose their main clientele.

“Either way there will be an impact,” said Fulgence Nkwenprana, who runs the La Palme hotel.

Aloys Kamanzi, a guide with Individual Tours, acknowledged there has been an initial slowdown in reservations, but is convinced people will keep coming, adding his clients are mostly “retired tourists who have saved their whole lives”, some of whom come three or four times.

The singer Zuniga said coming to Rwanda was a hard decision, as he had not heard much about what the country was like today from Mexico, where he lives with his family.

“Rwanda has a lot of sensitive echoes in my generation, the genocide … we had to cross over all these personal obstacles to make the decision to come here,” he said.

“They have to do better in promoting their tourism. Once you are here it is amazing, the people are unique, the country is beautiful. I would like to stay longer.”