Photo: Ida Njie, Managing Director- Gambia Tourism Board
The Gambia Tourism Board has reaffirmed its commitment to repositioning the destination on the global tourism map, with a strong focus on product diversification and year-round visitation, as it showcased its offerings at the 2026 edition of FITUR in Madrid.
Speaking in an interview with VoyagesAfriq on the periphery of the global travel trade fair, Ida Njie, Managing Director of the Gambia Tourism Board, highlighted the strategic importance of the engagement, describing FITUR as a vital platform for awareness-building, stakeholder engagement, and market expansion.
“I believe, we have created the necessary awareness of what The Gambia has to offer with itsproducts and services, and also with tangible and resourceful engagements that were arranged prior to our arrival,” Njie said. “We did have an informative discussion that we enjoyed when this conference was being held.”
At the core of The Gambia’s participation at FITUR, she stressed, is the overarching goal of increasing visitor arrivals and strengthening the destination’s visibility in key European source markets.
“I think, obviously, the most important one is to make sure that we increase our visitor numbers to the destination,” she emphasised.
Njie noted that while The Gambia has long been recognised internationally as a winter sun destination, the country is now deliberately working to broaden its tourism narrative and elevate its profile beyond the traditional beach holiday offering.
“We want to put the gallery and tourism to its rightful position in the tourism map. We also want to introduce some of our new products,” she explained. “We’ve had new products over the years in Gambia, so we want to showcase that.”
According to the Tourism Board’s Managing Director, innovation and product development remain central to The Gambia’s tourism strategy, particularly in catering to evolving traveller preferences and higher-end market segments.
“We also want to bring in new products for our high-level visitor guests. Very important and high priority for the Gambian,” Njie stated.
A major highlight of The Gambia’s outreach at FITUR was its renewed focus on the Spanish market, which Njie described as critical to the destination’s ambition of achieving balanced, year-round tourism growth.
“…the reason being that everybody knows Gambia to be a sun-beaten destination,” she said. “But the Spanish market is looking into the green season, which is the summer months.”
She acknowledged that the summer or “green” season has historically presented challenges for hotel occupancy but expressed confidence that targeted engagement with Spain could help close that gap.
“We want to fill, we want to make sure that all hotels are filled in the summer months,” Njieexplained. “And to do that, we have to diversify all our efforts to ensure that we have the Spanish market to fill in that gap, which has been missing for some time now.”
