Madam Fatmata Abe-Osagie, who is the Acting General Manager of the National Tourist Board (NTB), last week updated journalists on their activities at her Head Office, Aberdeen in Freetown.
According to her tourism is the movement of people from one cultural, economic, social destination to another within the same country or from one country to another for different proposes.
She informed that they have reviewed a lot of policies within the tourism sector and the Tourism Acts to match present tourism developments and that they have a lot of activities outlined for 2019 which would soon be implemented.
She furthered that to align with the vision of the New Direction Agenda, the Ministry of Tourism, NTB and partners prepared a five-year strategic plan which contains all the activities to be implemented, assuring that Sierra Leone is ready for business.
Madam Abe-Osagie disclosed that they have done a lot of structural reviews which include tourism infrastructural reviews, marketing and re-branding, capacity and products development classification reviews.
She underscored that in the area of product development, the National Tourist Board and the Ministry of Tourism and Cultural Affairs were able to launch the Adopted Booth geared towards community development and to also promote Eco-tourism development in the country.
To ensure effective tourism in the country, she said the National Tourist Board and it supervising Ministry have done a lot of engagements with other line Ministries. “Tourism cannot stand on its own; that is why we are collaborating with all MDAs and also the private sector,” she pointed out.
She informed that in the area of environment protection, NTB, in collaboration with the Environment Protection Agency (EPA), has recently launched the Smart City Campaign which aims to sensitize communities that are touristic attraction areas on the impact of climate change and what they can do to ensure that they protect the environment and how to make good use of the products they have in their communities.
She urged all hotel owners in the country to comply with the EPA Act on the protection of the environment and to also pay their EPA licences.
She noted that there has been regularization along the beaches regarding policy implementation that would bring sanity in all the beaches in the country.
Madam Abe-Osagie made it cleared that NTB is an important institution with the core mandate to promote, market and brand Sierra Leone tourism, emphasising that a lot of promotions and marketing have been made in both national and international platforms to attract more tourists to come to Sierra Leone and invest.
As part of their 2019 activities, she disclosed that the institution has linked up with huge tourism destinations like The Gambia and Kenya to make sure that Sierra Leone tourism develops, adding that they would continue to attract other tourist operators to come to Sierra Leone.
‘Sierra Leone tourism must boom,’ she noted, reiterating that Sierra Leone is ready for business, urging all to market and promote Sierra Leone’s tourism both at national and international levels.
She further called on people to invest in Eco- villages which is to promote tourism investment in the country.
