Well, after 24 hours of the worst flu I’ve had since childhood, I’m back. There is a serious virus(es?) going around this town (Kampala that is); several people are reporting symptoms on twitter and a number of friends have been taken ill. Wash those hands! The good news is the worst symptoms (namely, high fever with the usual chills and aches) seem short-lived. But that’s not much comfort when you’re in the middle of the thing.
Anywayyyy… what I really wanted to share is an email I got from TripAdvisor after reviewing Endiro (coffee shop in Kisementi) online. After I wrote a post on Uganda’s online tourism presence, I decided I should do my part in sharing information online about the places I frequent. Ideally, there should be a forum other than TripAdvisor to do this, but I had a feeling more people would read reviews on that popular platform than elsewhere. It might be useful for the managers/owners of the restaurants/hotels/etc. to see what others are saying about them online as well (the second review of Endiro, for example, is rather scathing).
Yesterday, I got this email from TripAdvisor:
What I found most interesting, of course, was that there were “3,105 travelers looking for information about Kampala this week”.
I don’t know how they calculate the number of “travelers” (as opposed to clicks on Kampala-related sites on their page) but at least this gives us a clue as to how many people are seeking information about Uganda online. First of all, this figure is only for Kampala, and second of all, it is only for TripAdvisor, suggesting that the number of folks looking for information online on Uganda is in the multiple thousands every week.
I had not previously found data regarding online searches for Uganda tourism, but this at least gives us a rough idea, and provides further evidence that Uganda’s online tourism presence matters! Over to you, UTB.
On a related note, Bernard Tabaire (@btabaire) has an interesting column on Uganda’s tourism sector in last Sunday’s Daily Monitor, link here.
Melina Raquel Platas 