After graduating in Tourism and Hotel Management from Kampala International University, Atukunda Kirsten, engaged herself in petty trade to make ends meet. But since she loved to do things that were in line with her career, she kept the ear on the ground until she landed on the Work Readiness Programme. She was placed at Adventure in the Wild Limited, a Tour and Travel company located in Najjanankumbi, along Entebbe Road in Kampala.

“When I heard about the programme, I got the encouragement to join. I applied online and I was invited to participate. I love tourism because you move and adventure. You see beyond what you should have known,” Atukunda says.

Six months later, Atukunda was retained to work as a Travel Consultant, a position she still holds. One of her responsibilities is to write content which is posted on the company’s website and links so that it can be accessed by potential tourists.

Before Atukunda embarked on the journey of content writing, she was tasked to traverse different parts of Uganda to have a feel of what Uganda has to offer in various national parks. This enabled her to compile content from an informed point of view. Atukunda writes details of different animals found in different National Parks and the animal classes that they belong to, location of the national parks and other interesting information about Uganda. Uganda is known for being a very hospitable country, which is equally a bait used to attract tourists into the country. Her contents are mainly consumed by international clients.

“ We mainly deal with international clients. They like reading more than the domestic clients. When I am writing content, the client reads and sends an inquiry, and we respond” Atukunda says.

She however says that when you are a beginner of writing content, you must know all tourist attractions in Uganda before you can go to other East African countries. The content helps clients to have an idea of what the place has to offer. She states exactly what the clients will be able to see when they get there.

“You don’t have to give wrong information. Those international clients are intelligent. They will say, in your blog you said this game park has got this type of animal, where is it?” Atukunda says.

By the time Atukunda joined the company, it was struggling to recover from Covid-10 shocks. The Tourism Industry was among the sectors of the economy that were hit harder by the lockdowns. Her unique communication and marketing skills that she acquired during the training have helped her to attract more clients not only to her company, but also to Uganda.

“When we came in, we had to increase the number of clients because of the content we were writing. About 90 percent of the clients are international tourists and 10 percent are domestic,” she says.

Although Ugandans have started embracing tourism, Atukunda says it still takes a lot of time to agree with them on payments due to over bargaining. She says the tourism industry is lucrative, but so competitive and that players have to be alert all the time to remain on top of the game.

“When a client sends an inquiry at 3:00 am, I must wake up immediately and answer it. If you delay, you lose them to your competitors. There is a lot of competition but, it is a good business because when you do it well, you earn a lot,” she says.