This call was made recently at the end of a two-day domestic tourism promotion tour at the market by officials from GTBoard.
The tour was part of GTBoard’s Tourism Policy and Strategy for 2021 to 2031, which seeks to significantly engage influencers and journalists to have a direct experience and to be able to help in the pursuit of promoting domestic tourism to reach the destination.
Yankuba Suso, a shop operator at the market, highlighted the need for more capacity building for them to raise their businesses to another level.
"We need more capacity building so that we can be more innovative to create different arts instead of having the same kind of hand crafts." he said.
Domestic tourism promotion initiative, he added, is welcome by them as it will add another plus for the country in terms of market for the locals.
Suso thus urged GTBoard to expand their marketing strategies to tap more into the European market.
He lamented that the industry faces so many challenges such as scarcity of timber.
“The timbers we normally used to carve with are dead timbers. We don’t cut timbers on large scales that can threaten the forest. Our production isn’t into that level,” he stated.
Karamba Sanyang, another shop operator at the Brikama Craft Market, expressed similar sentiments.
“We have a lot of challenges as we don’t have costumers in the rainy season. We also find it very tough because most customers nowadays are repeaters. ”
“We normally have our survival from the sales. We urged GTBoard to expand its marketing strategies to attract more tourists.” he added.
