Evaluation of marketing strategies for promoting cultural tourism in Tanzania the case of cultural tourism program

Abstract

There is a considerable potential to promote cultural tourism products in Tanzania. Of particular significance is the fact that this segment of tourism stands a better chance of alleviating income poverty of local people. To increase the synergetic effect of cultural tourism and community based tourism to alleviating local communities’ poverty, the Government established the Cultural Tourism Program in 1996. However, hither to, there has never been any study conducted on cultural tourism with a view to improving marketing strategies. Hence this study investigated the effectiveness of the current marketing strategies employed by Cultural Tourism Enterprises in terms of developing and presenting marketing stimuli directed at selected target markets to influence what they think, how they feel, and what they do. The specific objective was to examine and compare tourists’ prior perception/expectations and actual experience in order to determine their degree of level of satisfaction toward cultural tourism experience. The expectancy-disconfirmation theory provided a conceptual framework for this study. The study areas for this research were the CTEs in Arusha, the northern tourist circuit (Ilikiding’s, Moduli Juu, Mto wa Mbu and Tengeru), and CTEs in Morogoro and Tanga, the southern tourist circuit (Chilunga and Pangani respectively). The paired sample T-test analysis revealed that tourists were satisfied with majority of cultural tourism attributes. These were scenery, accessibility, local peoples’ traditions, friendliness of staff and locals, and professionalism of tour guides. Based upon this study, several recommendations were made to enable the CTEs increase the effectiveness of their marketing strategies. But the most outstanding one is that the CTEs should make a paradigm shift away from a product focus in favor of visitor focus based on the conceptualization of cultural tourism consumption as an experiential process