The Zanzibar Minister for Finance, Dr Saada Mkuya Salum, said visitors travelling to Zanzibar must, as of 01st September 2024, pay an insurance fee of $44 (Tshs 118,360/=) per visitor. She also said that this move aims to improve visitor services in Zanzibar. This chit investigates the advantages and disadvantages of introducing new fees when global soaring inflation gravitates towards fee reductions or total removal to maintain the same tourist arrivals.
What Will This Insurance Do?
According to the Minister, the fee will address past problems experienced in the tourism sector. The insurance will cover protection for health, lost baggage, accidents, emergency evacuation, passport loss, and even repatriation in case of death.
The flip side is that no tourist asked for or needed it, and it overlaps with other comprehensive insurance that visitors already have when visiting Zanzibar. It is a cunning feint to seek funds to cover the costs of their poorly thought health insurance scheme that faces similar dilemmas to the Mainland one is perspiring.
The health insurance bureaucracy costs are too high, leaving the intended benefits too minute to justify. Most countries have laws ensuring that citizens travelling to foreign countries are fully covered beyond what this insurance promises.
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What will happen is that tourists will pay for both health insurance covers, deeming the Zanzibar one as having hiked visa fees. No tourist will want to risk their lives in Zanzibar hospitals infamous for breeding and hosting superbugs. Most tourists regard banana republics like Zanzibar’s medical services as akin to committing suicide, so they will not touch them even with an electric axe pole.
All foreign insurance covers sickness, accidents, evacuations, and death costs, so Zanzibar’s health insurance is not well thought out. When mandatory payments compel health insurance, history has taught us that where there is no competition, sleaze, corruption, embezzlement, and theft reign supreme.
It could be different if the insurance company offered choices, but when the government runs it, everybody knows the money charged cannot match the quality of services promised. Governments are always generous in promises but stingy in delivery, and this insurance scheme is no different.
What Will Be The Implications of These New Additional Costs for The Visa?
Zanzibar’s success as a tourist attraction depends on beating competitors on pricing. Other tourist destinations, like Seychelles, have more to offer, particularly cleaner beaches and pristine, amazing scenery. Of more concern, poor Zanzibari have converted the Indian Ocean into a pit latrine, soiling it with faecal matter and sewage!
Rival destinations can afford to hike tourist fees, but Zanzibar cannot without risking a dent in tourist arrivals. Tourism is a staple revenue generator in Zanzibar, and packing more fees risk tanking the industry that has persevered to support the economy.
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At the heart of reduced tourist arrivals lies a risk of a flight of jobs. Those who earn a living from the tourism sector may find their sources of income dried up or trickling into a drought. That is the problem with bureaucrats. They only consider one dimension when this issue is multi-dimensional.
Bureaucrats at the Zanzibar Insurance Corporation are looking for ways to find cash to feed fellow bureaucrats. But to do that, they will have to starve the whole economy of reduced tourism income, and later, the government will feel it in the pocket, too. Then, bigger decisions will have to be made whether to restore the lost tourism glory by eliminating the punitive fees that killed their prime business or keep pretending everything is fine.
Ultimately, the fees will be shelved, but rebuilding the industry will take effort. In the meantime, the government will inflict pain on the poor to enrich the Zanzibar Insurance Corporation bureaucrats.
For Zanzibar’s tourism policy to succeed, all efforts should be directed to mass tourism rather than quality tourism. Mass tourism creates many menial jobs, which can be perpetual if there is peace in the country to support it. With jobs everywhere, the government can earn more without discouraging low-budget tourists from visiting the country.
Tour operators are already up in arms, fearing new fees will destroy their major sources of income. The world economy is facing a usual era of sustained high inflation, and tourists, too, have seen their wealth wiped out and are, therefore, less likely to shoulder these additional costs to visit Zanzibar.
Zanzibar has forgotten that tourists, too, can decide to visit Zanzibar more or not visit other countries with similar tourism appeals. Perhaps visitors planning a second visit will be the ones to baulk out. Second, visitors are the ones who add more to the Treasury, and discouraging them will hit the tourism revenue kit in more damning ways.
Life is about choices, and Zanzibar has made her own choices. The question in the future will be, in what ways was the tourism industry affected by this compulsive insurance coverage, and whether it was worth the effort? Time will tell. Zanzibar bureaucrats argue that other countries have it, but Zanzibar faces challenges that are different from those countries.
Copying and pasting what others are doing without incorporating your own specific circumstances may be the weakest link to this scheme. The amount tourists can pay is limited, and that barrier is now being stretched beyond known limits.
Are they aware that 70% of tourists are from working class? They save to have a holiday of their dreams. To add such a price could discourage people from visiting ghis beautiful country. Supposed it’s a family of five? I travel around Europe it’s so cheap, I come home the prices are ridiculously expensive! Tourist may look “differently” but don’t have a well that they use to fetch cash…$44 per person is not reasonable, its a burden, in my opinion.