Graduate’s tourism success

School of Sport and Service Management graduate Carmen Nibigira has received global recognition for her work promoting tourism in East Africa.

The regional tourism body which she heads was first runner up in the ‘Oscars’ of tourism, the United Nations World Tourism Organisation’s (UNWTO) 2016 Sustainable Tourism Initiatives Awards.

Carmen, Regional Co-ordinator for the East African Tourism Platform (EATP), was presented with the award in the Innovation in Public Policy and Governance category at the 12^th UNWTO Awards ceremony in Madrid.

The EATP promotes tourism, a core aspect in the East African Community integration process. By fostering dialogue between the private sector and the national governments of five destinations – Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Burundi – it has led a number of initiatives such as visa facilitation, joint marketing initiatives or the harmonization of standards and codes of conduct of tourism, positively enhancing the competitiveness and hence tourism of the area.

Carmen, based in Nairobi, is the former Director General of the Burundi National Tourism Office and was credited with raising the profile of tourism in Burundi.

Carmen graduated from the University of Brighton’s School of Sport and Service Management with a BA(Hons) in International Travel Management in 2005.

She said: “I had been so fortunate to have acquired the right foundation at the University of Brighton, where I was equipped to grasp and appreciate the complexity of the travel and tourism world as well as the thirst to discover more of this exciting industry that I knew little about back in 2002 when I enrolled to start my degree.

“I still have fond memories of my university campus in Eastbourne. The foundation I gained from what I learned in the class – the theories and the practices of the travel and tourism – proved to be very helpful. I still recall some of the core modules taught by Graham Shephard, Mike Taylor and Professor Marina Novelli (Professor of Tourism and International Development).

“My relationship with Brighton did not end after graduation. I was able to develop a professional relationship with Professor Novelli, who visited Burundi in 2009 to research aspects of tourism in a post-conflict situations of fragility, which we later jointly published in one of the top tourism journals.

“Professor Novelli celebrated EATP’s success with me at the UNWTO award ceremony in Madrid, where we also had the opportunity to plan a number of future professional collaborations.”