DEVELOPING CULTURAL PRODUCTS AS TOURISM ATTRACTIONS

 Cultural Tourism products are experiences based in a relationship between ( CHM) Cultural Heritage Management and Tourism, The CHM is the experience provider and tourist is the experience facilitator.

What is product?

"Product is anything that can be offered to a market for attention, acquisition, use, or consumption that satisfy a need or want. according to" (Kotler and Turner 1989) to look at what a product satisfy has distinguish conceptual levels of it, Core product, Tangible product, Augmented product.

Core product; This is the most important feature that describes the core benefit or solution provided by the product consumption, Is the reason of a customer to come and visit a destination which will satisfy his or her needs. example human history, evolution of mankind, human expression and beauty, or struggle for freedom.

Tangible product; The physical manifestation of the core product, The tangible facilitation of satisfying the need or core benefit, example the museum, festival, or cultural tour.

Augmented Product; This is for provide addition feature above and beyond the tangible product that add value and facilitate easier satisfaction of the core need. something increasing the beauty of the attraction that the costumer never think of it, 

Hierarchy of attraction

The cultural attractions product not all are the some, some they will be of great interest to the visitors and draw them from great distances and others will have little or no appeal to tourists.

Strategies for Cultural Tourism Attraction Development

Building a primary attraction; By identifying all the attractions fount at the specific place and identify the biggest one with the greatest primary potential, The primary attraction is those attractions in a destination that strongly influence the visitor to come from great distance.

Building lesser attractions to set/ network that collectivity can constitute a primary attraction

Identify all available attractions in a destination and develop them all in a way that you link them to each other , group in themes, map them and design connected products like tours. example small culture attractions like customs, worship places, housing, dressing.

Using Events/ Festivals

This it may be like a short term primary attractions, serve to concentrate a wide array of activities into a condensed time frame, a  mass of products fro consumption. example sauti za busara, 

Tactics to develop single attractions according to ( McKercher & DuCro, Chapter 8)

Tell the story around the asset; Cultural places/ assets always bear a story behind and cultural tourism is the process of telling that story, the story consign the cultural displayed for the tourist to like or interested with his or her tour.

Make the asset come alive; Visitation to become creative, exciting, evoking the imagination of the core need in most stunning manner.

Make it participatory; make tourist to engage with the displayed, example wandering around, dressing, drinking, and interacting.

Make it relevant; Present asset according to tourist's knowledge and frame of reference, make it culturally applicable to him/her.

Deliver quality and authenticity; Cultural tourist are well-educate, well-traveled hence very demanding also the quality and price should match.

Mythologize the asset; Convert asset to places with spiritual relevance by tying it to existing or new myths example foundation of tribe myth, indigenous beliefs gods myths.

Emphasize its otherness/ uniqueness; something different from the tourist's frame of reference, difference from the mainstream culture of the host society something makes it so unique.

Show the link from the past to present; Show the historic origin of an asset ant its evolution to its current status, the meaning of cultural asset change in different historic eras. example Hehe victory ageist German, pre colonial, colonial, after independence, globalized society.

Make it triumphant/ spectacular; you attraction must have edge over other, similar ones. example more spectacular battle than in other fields. example crazy atrocities like holocaust, Rwanda genocide.

Make it fantasy; evoke people imagination beyond what really happened in the place and transcend reality and fantasy.

Make it fun, light, and entertaining; most visitors don't seek deep learning experience but shallow entertainment so that you should be funny and visually appearing.

 

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Customer Service Skills in Tourism Industry

Customer service

Definition of customer service

Customer service skills

Importance of customer service skills

How to build a costumer service skills

 Customer Services

Customer are the people who buy your product or get your services. The business without a customer is nothing and without customer your business will never grow, so that whatever you get the customer you have to provide good service in a way that the customer will be satisfying of your product in order to build costumer loyalty.

Customer Service Skills

Communication and Listening

The importance thing in making customer to use your product is communication, The communication is one of  the most important skills in customer service, you need to communicate clear so that to build good first impression of the customer, avoiding ambiguity words, make the communication clear so the customer to understands you, Explanation is also important for a customer to follow instruction and understand the product also to make a choice on what to buy.  Listening is important thing in a communication process let the customer talk and you can provide  batter service.

Tolerance and Attitudes

Tolerance is the another skills in customer service, because in a business you meet with different people with different cultures so that you have to control your emotion in order to provide a good service and never talk bad to your customer. This may be difficult to muster for some people especially if they do not have this in nature, but no matter what you need to control your temper, polite language, positive attitudes, never show ill feelings to customer, stay nice and understanding through this you can sale the product easy.

Knowledge and problem solving skills

If you have a knowledge of the service you provide it will be easy to help the customer with there issues and to be able to solve their problems. this led to improve customer service experience by solving customer problem led the customer to trust the company and service provided.

Importance of  a customer service skills

If representatives have good customer service skills, clients will more likely be happy with their service or assistance, therefore keeping them as clients as well as getting new ones. In tourism services costumer service skills is needed more because the tourist are from different cultures, so by having customer services skills it will be easy to solve it and made the customer returning to your product.

How to build a customer services skill

Building customer service skills is more import to a business, the customer service skills create good first impression of a costumer to your service or product, and this led customer loyal of your company though customer satisfaction, Every business needs customer and each customer may require different needs and attention so through customer services skills is possible. The following are few things in building customer service skills

1.  Greetings,  when the customer come to you business establish greeting, this will led for customer to have a good first impression, you can great while you face the customer this will led the comfortably of the customer, if is through the phone you can start to great by introducing your name and the name of the company you are walk for, make sure that your using the right tone and words.remember to ask for the name of a person you talking to, to feel comfortable or known.
2. In case you will be using the details of the customer (name, address, order details, etc), make sure to verify it by spelling it out to the customer, just to make sure that what you are getting is an accurate data. This is applicable to customer service reps who take in orders via phone or something similar to this.
3. The use of body language; take note of the body language. should always practice professionalism even when it comes to their body language. Simple hand gestures and body movements can irritate customers. At the same time, customer service reps that are always standing straight and not slouching will always create a professional look. 
4. Having intercultural communication skills, this will help the employee to walk nice toward customer and solving their problem by understanding their complaining and how to solve it, customer complaints and other concerns should always understand where the customers are coming from. Reps are expected to listen to every word the customer is saying, so he/she can come up with a good resolution and pacify the situation.

 Returning customer is easy than creating a new customer.

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Udzungwa Mountains National Park

   

Sanje waterfall in Udzungwa Mountains National Park

 Udzungwa Mountains National Park

Is among of National Parks found in Tanzania, Udzungwa Mountains National Park is the most outstanding, pristine, paradise and unique exciting wilderness mountains forested with greatest altitudinal range of forest. It is one of thirty-four “World Biodiversity Hotspot” and one of 200 WWF Ecoregion of global critical importance.

Udzungwa Mountains National Park is part of the Eastern Arc Mountains, which is a series of mountains ranging from Taita Hills in Southern Kenya to the Makambako Gap in Southern central of Tanzania. 

Uniqueness of Udzungwa Mountain National Park 

 The park has second highest birds diversity in Africa behind only the Ituri forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo, The Park also has unique as the only national park in Tanzania having close canopy and unbroken forest from lowland rainforest at 250m asl rising to highland forest 2576m asl the highest peak in the park. The park has plants from small plants like Saint paullia to big tree over 30m high like Sterculia appendiculata and Antiaris toxicaria. Sanje waterfall is the highest waterfall found in the park

 

Tourist Attractions
The major attraction is biologically diverse plants, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds , butterfly, and insects of which some of species are found nowhere else in the world. Udzungwa Mountains National Park is the only known National Park in Tanzania with a culturally important natural cave and has survived destruction before gazettement due to traditional taboos and beliefs.

Things to do in Udzungwa Mountain

Climbing, hiking and bird watching and camping Safari are the major activity in the park,Mountain climbing and Hiking being the major activity, currently there are ten tourists’ trails in the eastern and western part of the park.

Eastern trailsMwanihana and Lumemo trails for hiking to Mwanihana peak the second highest peak 2500masl, Sanje trails for hiking to Sanje waterfall, Prince Bernhard trail for hiking to Prince Bernhard and Njokamoni waterfall, Sonjo trail hiking to Sonjo waterfall and Njokamoni Mwaya waterfalls trail.

Western trailsMbatwa trails for hiking to Mwanaluvele cave, Ibito valley and Ng’ung’umbi swamp.

Tourist climbing Udzungwa Mountains National Park

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RUAHA NATIONAL PARK

 Ruaha National Park 

Is the one of Tanzania National Park found in southern part of Tanzania with an area of almost 22,000km2 , The uniqueness of the park is the  largest park in Tanzania and recently extended to become the largest national park in East Africa after Kafue National Park in Zambia, and is the second largest wildlife protection area in Africa, 

The attraction found in Ruaha National Park.

The park has blessed with largest elephant populations in Africa, in addition to the elephants which are estimated to number at least 12,000, The Great Ruaha River in the east of the park for animal survival, other animal found in Ruaha national parks are buffalo, Kudu, Grant's gazelle, wild dog, ostrich, cheetah, sable antelope, Rynos have unfortunately become district within the borders of Ruaha national park due to the poaching. and more than 400 different bird species, The bird species that found in the park are hormbills, kingfishers, sun birds, and occasionally white storks,

 During the dry season, impala, waterbuck zebra, giraffe, buffalo and other antelopes trek to the river but are quickly preyed upon by lions, cheetahs, leopards, hyenas and wild dogs as well as hippos and crocodiles that wait in the great river. Ruaha is also famous for its rich diversity of antelope.

Accommodations

There are a lot of accommodations found within the park and outside near the park for the tourist use at Tungamalenga area, variety of  cap site such as Chogera cap site, Sifa Cap site , Ruaha Hilltop hotel, Ruaha river lodge, Jongomero Camp, Sunset mountain lodge. all this hotel and campsite provide accommodations, Ruaha National Park is the place which you won't regret to visit.

Visit Ruaha National Park for nice viewing.

 

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Cultural attractions

 Curios shops

A curio shop then is by extension a shop that sells curios. They're often seen in movies as having disturbing/incredibly out of the ordinary objects, but most curio shops simply have interesting or unusual things. 

Meru curios & crafts market Is the market that found in Arusha Tanzania, is the biggest market based on curios and craft shops, many of Tanzanians and other people from outside employed themselves at the market.  Meru curio market protect and conserve different cultures craft, The present of this market in Arusha increasing advertisement of Arusha Tanzania through the uses of Tourist, employment opportunity, income generation and foreign currency  and through this market Arusha  is becoming the center of cultural attraction

Price of commodities

At Meru curio market there is no specific price, the price depends on the type of client and the commodities, the different of prices depends also on the type of owner of the product, all in all the price is not too much for a client fail to buy the commodities.

Problem faced customer and traders

Language Barrie this because the market depend much tourist customer and it true that the tourist are the ones who use and prefer much cultural things rather than residence, so that  more costumer are tourist, the problem is many workers knows Swahili language and little English language for the tourist who use other language it can be difficult to get a product but by using English they can get services.

How to sale the product

Despite of put the market at the center of Arusha but they have to advertise and promote the market not only for the tourist but for the resident because there are residence that do not reach at the market by afraid prices and others is ignorance that they think the market is for tourist.

 

Welcome Arusha welcome Mt Meru Curios&Crafts Market

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MOUNTAINS

 

 KILIMANJARO

Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain in Africa found in southern part of Tanzania in Kilimanjaro region Is the mountain that blessed ice and valuable climatic condition for the tourist to enjoy the place, Kilimanjaro is composed of three distinct volcanic cones: Kibo 5,895 m (19,341 ft); Mawenzi 5,149 m (16,893 ft); and Shira 3,962 m (13,000 ft). Uhuru Peak is the highest summit on Kibo's crater rim.

Mount Kilimanjaro climbing rousts

There are six official trekking routes by which to climb Mt Kilimanjaro, namely: Marangu, Rongai, Lemosho,Shira, Umbwe and Machame. Of all the routes, Machame is by far the most scenic albeit steeper route up the mountain, which can be done in six or seven days. The Rongai is the easiest and least scenic of all camping routes with the most difficult summit night and the Marangu is also relatively easy, but accommodation is in shared huts with all other climbers. As a result, this route tends to be very busy, and ascent and descent routes are the same.

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