Dear All,
We hugely regret the inconvenience that some of our guests have been caused since the 1st August at points of entry to Serengeti, Mahale and Katavi National Parks.
To better understand the situation, here is the background:
Following 5 years of negotiations between permanent lodge and camp owners in National Parks and Tanzania National Parks Authority, a Standardised Licence Agreement was agreed and signed by all parties on 27th October 2010. Amongst many things, this agreement stipulated that the Concession Fees were payable by the lodge/camp owners on the basis of 10% of half board at the month-end, this is also enshrined in current law. Licence Agreements for individual lodges and permanent camps were then replicated from this standard agreement. Nomad's three involved properties, Greystoke Mahale, Chada Katavi and Lamai Serengeti had their Licences signed on 15th March 2011.
TANAPA wrote to all lodge and permanent camp owners in July, stating that from 01st August 2011, Concession Fees were payable by tour operators in advance and the rates were unilaterally set.This was in total contravention to all previously signed agreements and was not acceptable to us or our guests.
We, through the Tourism Confederation Tanzania (TCT), the Tanzania Association of Tour Operators (TATO) and the Hotels Association of Tanzania (HAT) have made various appeals to the authorities during the past few weeks to prevent this crisis and have now initiated a dialogue with TANAPA (Tanzania National Parks) and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism to resolve the matter. We sincerely hope that further inconvenience to our guests can be avoided.
We want to thank everybody for their cooperation, patience and understanding during these very unfortunate events, which we trust will not reoccur. We are committed to the continued development of Tanzania as a quality tourism destination.
Kind regards
John
John Corse
Managing Director
Nomad Tanzania
