Visits to the natural home of Mountain Gorillas in Rwanda fetched a whopping $19.2Million last year- this represents a 25% increase in revenue, according to new statisticsreleased by Rwanda Development Board.
From these RDB figures, the money was fetched from 15,132 permits sold out to visitors to the massive Volcanoes National Park in North Western Rwanda.
Rwanda is also preparing to host the annual Kwita Izina ceremony and has lined up 25 baby mountain gorillas that will receive names. The event will take place on September 6th at Kinigi, Musanze district.
There are over 1000 gorillas living in the vast Virunga massif- an 8000 sqkm natural habitat containing a chain of 8 volcanoes that span across the three countries of Rwanda, Uganda D R Congo and covers 3 national parks of Parc National des Virunga (PNVi) in the DR Congo, Parc National des Volcans (PNV) in Rwanda and the Mgahinga Gorilla National Park (MGNP) in Uganda.
In May 2018, Rwanda signed a “Visit Rwanda” tourism campaign deal in which the Visit Rwanda logo features on the left sleeve of all Arsenal Football Club teams for three years.
This partnership deal which was formally launched in August 2018 has attracted considerable criticism but 24 months later, Rwanda says, the gorilla revenue only has increased by 25%.
For one hour watching mountain gorillas in Rwanda’s Volcanoes national park, a visitor has to pay $1500.
Rwanda invested £30million in the VisitRwanda Arsenal deal with a target of collecting £300million. But surprisingly Rwanda is now fetching more than £450million.
President Paul Kagame said in June that investment in the VisitRwanda deal with Arsenal was already paying off good results and “The estimation is, in 5 years we will be hitting 1 billion.”
The Express News
