Amos Wekesa: Understanding Gorilla Tourism in Uganda

There are both advantages and disadvantages of gorilla tourism in uganda, and I have observed this over time.  The greatest advantage of gorilla tourism is how much each tourist pays to view them for an hour, USD 800 per person.

The other advantage is that those who come to see the MT gorillas tend to be high-end clients who fly, stay in expensive lodging, and prefer good-quality cars. The biggest disadvantage of mountain gorilla tourism is that it’s a limited product in nature.

Uganda has 29 families that are habituated( those that tourists can visit), and only 8 people can trek to each family. And by the way, Uganda hosts about 53.9% of the world’s remaining population, and that means in a day, only 232 people can see all the families.

That also means 84,680 in a year on full occupancy, which isn’t the case, and if we had full occupancy annually, we would make about USD 67,744,000. Right now, Uganda Wildlife Authority makes about USD 22 million annually, which is about 30% occupancy. Of course, that doesn’t include the money paid for lodging, transport, feeding, guides, etc

Our NEIGHBORs Rwanda makes over USD 35m from their gorillas since they charge USD 1500, plus, they have very high-end accommodations which attract the very rich from around the world. The USD 22m is close to 50% of the total money collected from the 22 national parks and have reserves combined annually. Mountain gorillas, unfortunately, have been sold as the flagship product of Uganda is very wrong in my opinion.

Gorilla tourism must only be sold as a premium product at an even higher cost, but emphasise that uganda is a country you can visit, see no gorillas, but fully enjoy.  Today, 90% of the tourists who enquire from abroad, especially if the gorilla permits aren’t available, will choose to spend their money elsewhere.

That happens for the months of June to September, and a bit of January and February, and it’s always easy to get tourists to do other national parks if they are assured of the gorilla permits during high season. That explains how terrible our numbers are compared to our neighbours. I haven’t given you Tanzania numbers. Just look at the stats below and see how behind we are compared to our competitors.

USD 22m collected annually from gorillas is equivalent to what Tanzania collects in 10 days from Serengeti National Park alone from park entrances and bed night fees.  Gorillas should never make more money than the Savannah National Park because they aren’t limited by numbers. For example, gorillas should never make us more money than rafting on the Nile.

The way forward is making sure we position our biggest attractions through better content that is marketed globally. Our weather is a multi-billion dollar opportunity, so is the Nile, our mountains, Lake Victoria, the Savannah parks, our cultures, etc.