[{"bbox": [96, 153, 1135, 438], "category": "Text", "text": "standards. The Gambia's existing regulations are inadequate with regard to environmental and social standards and enforcement is weak (e.g. child protection, trafficking, sexual exploitation and abuse, and other harmful practices). This is also due to inadequate institutional and human capacity and limited public awareness of rights and standards. Similarly, capacity is limited related to waste management, resource efficiency, environmental technologies, green packaging or integrated environmental management. Only a small number of Gambian tourism related businesses meet international standards for sustainable and responsible tourism. Further, the Youth and Trade Roadmap for Tourism (2018-2022)⁶, and the Youth and Trade Roadmap for The Gambia's Creative Industries (2019-2023)⁷ highlighted the complexity of the quality assurance structure for tourism, creative industries, and allied sectors affecting the industry's competitiveness. The new Tourism Policy and Strategy addresses the bottleneck by putting forward a more robust coordination framework and accountability structure."}, {"bbox": [96, 455, 594, 483], "category": "Section-header", "text": "## Narrow product offering and sub-standard quality"}, {"bbox": [96, 500, 1135, 697], "category": "Text", "text": "The main tourism offering is strongly concentrated on beach-related products. The tourism infrastructure, particularly in rural areas, remains poor with a low quality of services and substandard products and facilities. Productive capacity and value addition of MSMEs along the tourism and creative industries is low. Businesses lack adequate support services, training and coaching programmes, production and processing facilities, packaging equipment, knowledge and skills in branding and access to finance and markets. This hampers private sector growth and investment in higher value-added experiences, such as cultural, sport and adventure, community, river-based or eco-based tourism."}, {"bbox": [96, 717, 623, 745], "category": "Section-header", "text": "## Limited market diversification and strong seasonality"}, {"bbox": [96, 762, 1135, 962], "category": "Text", "text": "The sector relies on a few international tour operators (ITOs) that offer low-value package tourism. The captive relationship with ITOs also extends to domestic tourism-related businesses. A World Bank assessment in 2019 found that 36 hotels get 85% of their deals from ITOs. The collapse of Thomas Cook in 2019 demonstrated the risk of this overreliance, causing loss of 57,000 bookings (flight + hotel), and an estimated drop of USD 26.8 million in tourist spending and arrival fees. The dependency is compounded by a low diversification of source markets with the majority of tourists coming from the traditional markets including UK, Scandinavia, Netherlands, Spain, and Belgium."}, {"bbox": [96, 980, 1135, 1208], "category": "Text", "text": "Despite all-year tropical weather, The Gambia's tourism is highly seasonal with strong arrival numbers during the dry or winter season that stretches from November to April (158,016 air arrivals in 2019) and much lower numbers in the green season from May to October (77,772 registered air arrivals in 2019). The pronounced seasonality creates structural issues for the industry rendering many businesses inactive and creating vulnerabilities for workers who are without income during the off-season. The Gambia lacks an effective destination marketing strategy that can tap innovative marketing platforms and channels. Because of the strong reliance on ITO, the private sector is also short of experience and knowledge particularly with regard to digital marketing and online presence."}, {"bbox": [96, 1226, 197, 1254], "category": "Section-header", "text": "## Skill gaps"}, {"bbox": [96, 1271, 1135, 1471], "category": "Text", "text": "Assessments by the International Trade Centre (ITC) carried out as part of the Youth and Trade Roadmap for the Tourism Sector (2018 - 2022), the Youth and Trade Roadmap for the Creative Industries (2020-2024), and The Gambia Technical Vocational Education and Training Roadmap (2020-2024)⁸ mapped out skills gaps for key professions in the tourism sector and creative industries. The EU-funded Youth Empowerment Project helped improve significantly the relevance, quality and access to skills training, particularly through the investments in the Gambia Tourism and Hospitality Institute (GTHI). However, additional investments are required to boost market-led skills training. There are gaps in level of operational capacity and technical expertise of training"}, {"bbox": [85, 1522, 873, 1549], "category": "Footnote", "text": "⁶ https://www.yep.gm/storage/app/uploads/public/5b6/034/eb2/5b6034eb2623c487527702.pdf"}, {"bbox": [85, 1563, 864, 1590], "category": "Footnote", "text": "⁷ https://www.yep.gm/storage/app/uploads/public/5df/0b4/983/5df0b4983a0bf173160428.pdf"}, {"bbox": [85, 1604, 821, 1631], "category": "Footnote", "text": "⁸ https://yep.gm/storage/app/uploads/public/5e8/1d6/411/5e81d641142f473337154.pdf"}, {"bbox": [1038, 1681, 1144, 1706], "category": "Page-footer", "text": "Page 6 of 25"}]