Tourists enjoy wildebeests in the Serengeti National Park.
BY SUKHDEV CHHATBAR
Tanzania’s peak tourism season kicks off next week with hotels, lodges and tour operators expecting a busy period as the country builds on last year’s strong growth in visitor arrivals and earnings.
The June-to-October dry season, which translates as summer and part autumn for the Northern Hemisphere, is traditionally the busiest period for the country’s tourism industry, especially for wildlife safaris in the northern circuit, including Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, Tarangire and Lake Manyara, Mount Kilimanjaro climbs as well as Zanzibar beach holidays.
Tour operators say demand is already rising as travellers move to secure accommodation in facilities of major tourism destinations ahead of arrivals. Tanzania is the globally acclaimed safari destination with the world’s largest lion population and effortless viewing of the “Big Five”– elephants, buffalos, rhinos, lions and leopards, the most prized sightings in the wild.
“During the peak season, rooms in and around the parks are usually the first to go. If visitors wait too long, the best lodges and camps are either fully booked or available only at higher rates,” said one Arusha-based tour operator.
Several travel operators also urged visitors to book early. One safari company noted in an advisory that for peak season travel between June and October, lodges and camps “fill up early, often months in advance,” making last-minute bookings more difficult and expensive.
The season ushers in as Tanzania emerges from strong tourism performance, having received 5,935,561 tourists in 2025 up from 5,360,247 visitors in 2024.
The figure represents a 10.7 per cent increase, according to data presented in Parliament recently by the Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Dr Ashatu Kijaji.
Of the total number recorded last year, international tourists rose to 2.29 million, compared with 2.14 million in 2024, while domestic tourists increased from 3.22 million to 3.64 million. Tourism earnings also rose from dollars 3.9 billion in 2024 to dollars 4.4 billion in 2025, reinforcing the sector’s position as one of Tanzania’s leading foreign exchange earners.
“These achievements show that investments made by the government are continuing to yield positive results,” Dr Kijaji said when presenting the ministry’s budget estimates for the 2026/27 financial year in Dodoma.
The government has set a target of attracting eight million tourists annually by 2030 and also seeking to increase tourism’s contribution to the national economy from about 17 per cent to 20 per cent of GDP over the same period.
The latest detailed source-market data from the 2024 International Visitors’ Exit Survey showed that most international visitors to Tanzania came from the United States, Italy and Spain. Other major markets included France, the United Kingdom, Germany, China, Russia, India and South Africa.
For mainland Tanzania, the survey showed that the United States accounted for 15 per cent, followed by Italy at 11.8 per cent, France at 7.3 per cent, the United Kingdom at 6.4 per cent, Spain at 5.3 per cent and Germany at 4.9 per cent.
For Zanzibar, Italy remained one of the leading source markets, followed by France, the United Kingdom and Spain while most African visitors to the islands came from South Africa and Kenya.
