President Paul Kagame received in his office Deborah Calmeyer, the founder of ‘ROAR Africa’, an agency that promotes tourism through planning high-end tourist trips.
President Kagame and Deborah Calmeyer met on Monday, September 4, in Urugwiro Village. It was a discussion attended by Clare Akamanzi who heads the Rwanda Development Board .
ROAR AFRICA is known as a travel agency for high end tourists.
The talks between President Kagame and this woman, who is also the CEO of ROAR Africa, focused on looking together at how the organization he manages could work more closely with Rwanda in promoting tourism.
Calmeyer is in Rwanda to welcome tourists who will visit the country through the program known as ‘Greatest Safari On Earth’ organized by the company he manages.
It is not the first time that ‘ROAR Africa’ has worked with Rwanda as it has also brought 10 high-level tourists, including nine Americans and one from the United Arab States, to visit Rwanda in August 2021.
They traveled across the country through the ‘Greatest Safari On Earth’ program, where they each paid $125,000 for the 12 days they had to spend on this trip.
At that time, Director and founder of ROAR AFRICA, Deborah Calmeyer, said that this program aims to show tourists that there are places in Africa that they should visit.
She said, “Many of these people came to Africa for the first time, so they saw many things, animals. It is important that they know what is going on. They want to visit all of Africa, and now is the way to do it. Using this plane, we were able to visit four countries that have modern tourism in 12 days.
She said that this tourism is expected to help Rwanda recover from the effects of COVID-19. She said, “Rwanda is the first country that opened tourism in August last year, and has put in place measures to prove it. Your people are kind to each other. We chose Rwanda because of the geese in your country, everyone wants to be satisfied.”
Statistics show that Rwanda earned $247 million in the first six months of 2023 from tourism, a 56% increase from the $158 million earned in the same period in 2022.
