At the Mount Meru Hotel during the Arusha International Tourism Conference & Expo 2026 (AITC), I found a seat near the back and did what I have done for more than a decade in rooms like this. I watched the audience more than the speakers. Professors in good suits. Tour operators with phones on silent, but not really silent. Students photographing slides they will never open again. And one question kept tapping my shoulder like a waiter with the bill: Who outside this hall will ever hear what was said here?
The theme was big: “Digital Agenda and Artificial Intelligence to Redesign Tourism.” Big themes are good. But big themes have a habit of staying inside big halls.
Let us be honest with each other. The numbers are sweet. Prof. Dev Jani showed us that international arrivals climbed from about 920,000 in 2021 to nearly 2.3 million in 2025. Tourism earnings grew from USD 1.31 billion to USD 4.41 billion. That is not small money. That is school fees, hospital beds and roads to Karatu. But he also asked the question that matters: has all this technology made us more sustainable? His answer was simple. Let the machine do the repetitive work. Let the human being lead where people, fairness and culture are at stake.
I agree. And I will add something from my side of the fence. Communication is exactly that human part. A machine can send a booking confirmation at two in the morning. It cannot calm a village that feels tourism is passing it by. It cannot sit with an elder and explain why his community’s stories are being fed into a computer. That is our work.
Look at what the researchers brought. One paper told us our tourism laws are not missing; they are scattered, each law holding a small piece of the elephant. Another found that digital skills among our tourism workers are only moderate. Another reminded us that a smart safari is not about buying gadgets. It needs people, institutions and leaders growing together. A young Tanzanian platform, YoPal, already has an AI assistant helping travellers in Swahili and English. And one study argued that a simple “Karibu” from a guide can do more for a visitor’s experience than we give it credit for.
Wonderful findings. Now tell me, how many hotel managers in Mto wa Mbu will read a paper full of statistical models? How many councillors? How many journalists? Research that does not travel is like a lion in a zoo. Beautiful, but not doing what it was born to do.
This is where Strategic Communication comes in. Not as the people who arrange the banner and the group photograph at 10:30. As the people who translate. We take a finding and turn it into a story a tour guide can repeat, a two-page brief a minister can read between meetings, a radio segment in Swahili, a message people will actually forward.
There is another danger. When experts go quiet, noise fills the space. If we do not explain AI in tourism simply and honestly, someone else will explain it for us. Some will say machines are coming to take guides’ jobs. Others will sell every new app as magic. Both are wrong, and both spread faster than any research paper.
So here is my proposal. The tourism industry needs a Communications Think-Tank. A small, serious table where researchers, operators, regulators, journalists and communication professionals meet regularly, not once a year. Its job would be simple: take what conferences like this produce, turn it into plain language, test messages with communities, and carry the right questions back to the researchers. We have trained communication professionals in this country ready for this work. We only need to be invited to the table early, not at the vote of thanks.
For the coming conferences, a few small changes would make a big difference. Give communication its own place on the programme. Ask every presenter for a one-page summary in plain English and Swahili. Invite editors as participants, not just as cameras. Hold a short media briefing before lunch, while the ideas are still warm. Then come back three months later and tell the public what changed.
Our country has what the world wants. Kilimanjaro, Serengeti, Ngorongoro, Zanzibar, and people who still say “Karibu” and mean it. The machines will help us sell and manage all of this better. But machines have no mother tongue. Trust is built by people.
I left the hall thinking about our children. They will grow up with AI in their pockets. Will they also grow up knowing how to tell Tanzania’s story in their own voice? Or will we let the machines do the talking while we clap politely at the end of each session?
If we don’t speak for Tanzanian tourism, who will?
