Serengeti National Park in Tanzania and Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya have each won the World Travel Awards six times, and for a good reason. They share a borderline and are both world-famous for the wildebeest migration, the largest and longest overland migration on earth.
This year, it was again Serengeti’s turn to win the coveted Leading National Park in Africa for the sixth time in a row.
Mara, which directly borders the Serengeti on its northern side, bagged the award for six consecutive years from 2013 to 2018.
Each year, about two million ungulates, among them wildebeests and zebra, traverse Serengeti and Mara, making one of the world’s most spectacular wildlife shows, attracting more than 350,000 tourists every year on the Tanzanian side.
The country has been receiving an average of 1.5 million visitors per annum, with over 60 percent of them preferring wildlife safaris, and the rest sampling the beaches in Zanzibar or various cultural sites.
That explains why Serengeti gets most of the traffic -- and the awards.
Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest point on the continent, was declared Africa's leading tourist attraction site in the 2024 awards held in Mombasa on October 20.
In 2023, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, now embroiled in controversy over displacement of herders and trophy hunting, won the title.
South Africa’s Table Mountain had dominated the award.
The Tanzania National Park’s commissioner of conservation Musa Kuji says investors in the tourism sector are encouraged by the recognition.
Northern Tourism Circuit is favoured by the fact that tour operators in Tanzania are based in Arusha, which makes the city the de facto starting point for all safaris to Mount Kilimanjaro, Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti National Park, which are within less than a 200-kilometre radius from one another.
Tourists at the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.
Photo credit: File
In fact, Ngorongoro and Serengeti border each other and, along the way from the Kilimanjaro International Airport, tour vans can drive through the Arusha National Park and Lake Manyara.
Willy Chambulo, Chairperson of Tanzania Association of Tour Operators (Tato), notes that the distance to other parks such as Nyerere, the biggest in the country, and Ruaha, the second-biggest in the Southern Circuit, is long, with the sole road leading there always have traiffic gridlock.
“Tourists don’t want to spend more time in traffic,” Chambulo said, noting that it is easier to go to Serengeti and Ngorongoro.
The Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania.
Photo credit: Shutterstock
But why not fly? According to the Tato official, the cost of flying from, say Dar es Salaam or Kilimanjaro to places like Ruaha is like paying a one-way ticket to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, so, visitors settle for the more accessible Serengeti and Ngorongoro and other parks in between, such as Tarangire and Lake Manyara.
But again, most foreign visitors who rely on the already available information, come prepared to see Serengeti, Ngorongoro or Kilimanjaro, the destinations that have been most advertised for 60 years now.
According to Chambulo, the Southern Circuit needs to be promoted too, to gain the visibility currently enjoyed by the destinations in the North.
“Suffice it to say that the parks in the south are indeed bigger and boast more wildlife but lack the needed infrastructure and accommodation,” John Timothy, one of the local tour drivers and guides based in Arusha, told The EastAfrican.
With support from the World Bank, the management of Tanzania National Parks (Tanapa) is working to build new roads and upgrade existing ones in the Mikumi, Nyerere and Ruaha national parks through the Resilient Natural Resource Management for Tourism and Growth (Regrow) project.
The project is again constructing airstrips with longer runaways in the three Southern Circuit parks to ease transport.
Regrow also targets to boost tourism in the Southern Circuit and take the pressure off the northern routes.
