CHALLENGES OF IMPLEMENTING SUSTAINABLE TOURISM DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES IN UGANDA : A CASE STUDY OF FORT PORTAL TOURISM CITY

Sammanfattning: The study focused on finding out the challenges of implementing sustainable tourism development strategies and policies in Uganda, with a view of generating information on knowledge of the sustainable development challenges among stakeholders, and how best the challenges of their implementation can be addressed to achieve sustainability in the tourism sector. It is motivated by the fact that, despite the Ugandan government's efforts to build tourism as a major economic earner of the country, the sector still yields uncertain fluctuating and fewer returns. Additionally, the host communities are yet to see tangible benefits from the tourism they host, raising questions about the sustainability of tourism. Specifically, the researcher set out to find out the sustainable tourism development strategies and policies that are being implemented by tourism stakeholders in Fort Portal city and to identify the challenges faced by tourism stakeholders in achieving a sustainable tourism industry. Fort Portal tourism city was chosen as the case study for this research because it was earmarked as a model tourism city in Uganda in 2017. The study was qualitative and used key informant interviews and document reviews as the data collection methods. As a result, key informant interviews (KIIs) and documentary reviews were the primary qualitative data-gathering methods chosen because of their capacity to provide rich data with high validity while situating and understanding data in their larger context. Findings revealed four critical sustainable tourism strategies; infrastructure investment, Employment skilling of people in host communities, environmental and cultural conservation for tourism, and Covid-19 response strategy. A key challenge among others was a disconnect between tourism planning at the national and the local level. This explained why tourism stakeholders' grasp of sustainable tourism policies was insufficient, leading to low sector returns. The study recommends urgent integration of tourism planning at the National and local levels, while engaging stakeholders, including investors, and political and local leaders. It further suggests increased investment in the identified strategies through government and public-private partnerships to address the tourism sector's finance and human resource gaps.