Sector Overview: Hospitality and Tourism

Guinea has diverse tourism opportunities. The country’s evenly stretched verdure and widely diverse landscape is indeed gorgeous. It has rich biodiversity with significant aesthetic, diverse natural beauty composed of parks, aquariums and natural hot springs, unique animal species, mountainous terrains and many river meander cutoffs, gorges and rapids.

The country is brimming with vegetation diversity – from broad coastal beaches to dense forests embedded with nature ultimate secrets from the foothills of the Fouta Djallon to the vast plains drained by the Niger River and its tributaries. And to crown them all, the people of Guinea have a strong tradition of showing hospitality to visitors.

Guinea has a coastline of 300 km and a continental shelf of 56,000 km2 among the largest in West Africa extending up to 80 nautical miles offshore.

The diversity, topography, climate and culture of Guinea make it a "tourist paradise"of varied resources..

Current situation

Guinea has many diverse tourist attractions:

Travel and discovery tourism: Soumba Waterfalls, the Bridal Veil Falls / Kilissi Falls, the gorges and falls of Kinkon and Kambadaga, Saala Falls, “la Dame du Mali”, and Kamarato Falls.

Health tourism: the station of Dalaba, the Foulamory thermal spring.

Hiking - Raids – Adventure – Trekking

1.      Trekking: It is done mainly in the Fouta Djallon in Middle Guinea, the mountainous region; Tour operators like Kalya, Zig–Zag and Balaguères work with the Fouta Djallon Trekking Association.

2.      The Sangaréah Bay in Maritime Guinea covering a total area of 30,000 ha contains mudflats, avifauna, gorgeously green islands and crocodile habitat.

3.      The Region of Fouta Djallon (Mamou Dalaba, Pita, Labé, Mali, etc).

Mount Nimba and its environs: peak of West Africa (1,752m), one of the most beautiful forests in West Africa.

The nature reserves of Ziama and its herds of elephants in Macenta.

Parks and mountains:

1.      The Badiar Park in the Fouta Djallon: 38,200 ha of total area with the Sow Hill, Mount Badiar and varieties of games.

The Upper Niger Park: 1,860 km2 with the Niger River flowing through it, rich in game (warthogs, Fassa cock ...) and lush flora.

Seaside tourism: gorgeous green islands with beautiful beaches: Sorro and Room along the beach of Conakry, SOBANE, Bel Air, Kitikata and Marara in Boffa, Mèyèngbé in Dubréka and Salatougouj in Forécariah.

Sport fishing on the Loos Islands: the most fished species are tarpon and barracuda.

Hunting tourism: small and large games (warthogs, rhinos, antelope, etc.).

Guinea is also a retrospection of the past and one of Africa’s memories

1.      Africa Middle Ages sites: Niani (capital of the Mali Empire) Niagassola (SossoBala: the balafon of Sosso)

2.      Renowned slave and sad memory sites: Dominyah, Farinyah, etc.

3.      Vestiges of resistance to colonial conquest: Bissandugu, Timbo, Niagassola (Fort Gallieni), etc.

Guinea is embarking on exploring a tourist paradise with varied resources yet unknown. The country has preserved heritage and protected environment, essence of authentic tourism.

In 2016, there were 413 hotels in the country with 5,507 rooms (6,310 beds). Many investment opportunities are yet to be exploited in the sector.

Competitive advantages

It is commonly accepted that Guinea offers particularly interesting development conditions for most types of tourism. This advantage stems from the diversity and variety of the landscape, microclimates, fauna and flora, handicrafts, hospitable traditions and also from its history, which together represent a capital of rich and dynamic civilization.

Guinea is composed of all the features of West Africa through its four natural regions with distinct landscape, climate, fauna and flora.

The dances, traditions, crafts heritage and warm hospitality of the people make the country a pleasant destination.

In recent years, the construction of new international luxury hotels has resulted in the steady increase of hotel rooms and an exponential growth in reliable vehicle rental companies (Europcar, Hertz, Avis ...) meeting international standards. Travel agencies have also increased noticeably...

The underlying advantage of the tourism industry can be attributed to the political will and ambition of the Guinean government to develop a variety of tourism products: seaside tourism, ecotourism, cultural tourism, conferences, discovery, hiking, hunting…

Opportunities in brief

Despite its immense natural and fascinating advantages, the Guinean tourism sector is still experiencing an eclipse: The tourism potential of the country is virtually untapped.

Though the country has many attractive natural sites, incomes generated from the vast parks are still marginal to develop the industry.

Therefore, there are many investment opportunities under the Public-Private Partnerships and Private Investment scheme. Bright business development ideas in the industry can be consulted in the investment matrix.

According to the World Tourism Organization forecasts, tourism in West African parks will undergo an increase of 3.3% between 2010 and 2020 with 4.62 million visitors projected in 2020, accounting for 6% of total visits in the African region.