Advisor, Tourism Competitiveness & Investment Facilitation

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Role Summary

The Tony Blair Institute, in partnership with the Rwanda Development Board, is seeking to recruit an exceptional Advisor – Tourism Competitiveness & Investment Facilitation to support Rwanda’s ambition to strengthen its position as a premium, high-quality, and diversified tourism destination.

This role will be embedded within the Rwanda Development Board (RDB) and will work closely with the Tourism Office, regulatory counterparts, investment facilitation teams, and wider government stakeholders. The Advisor will support two mutually reinforcing priorities: first, strengthening hospitality service quality standards, inspection practice, and enforcement credibility; and second, advancing tourism product diversification and improving the investment facilitation systems required to attract, assess, and convert high-quality tourism investments.

The position will support RDB to improve the consistency and credibility of hospitality regulation through clearer service quality standards, better inspection operations, and practical enforcement improvements. In parallel, the Advisor will help the Tourism Office identify priority gaps in Rwanda’s tourism offer, build a structured pipeline of diversified tourism product opportunities, assess incoming investor proposals, and strengthen coordination across the tourism investment facilitation process.

The role requires a strong delivery-oriented professional who can bridge tourism sector strategy, service quality, regulation, investment facilitation, institutional coordination, and practical implementation. The Advisor will be expected to diagnose operational and market bottlenecks, design practical tools and frameworks, support institutional adoption, and work hands-on with government teams to improve the systems that underpin tourism competitiveness, visitor experience, and investment conversion.

This is not a traditional advisory role. It requires someone able to move between policy, operations, investors, and delivery; translate strategic priorities into usable tools and routines; and help RDB build stronger internal capability across both hospitality quality enforcement and tourism product development.

Role Responsibilities

1. Strategic Tourism Competitiveness Advisory

Advise RDB and the Tourism Office on practical interventions to strengthen Rwanda’s tourism competitiveness, with balanced attention to hospitality service quality, regulatory credibility, tourism product diversification, and investment facilitation

Support the translation of Rwanda’s premium tourism positioning and NST2 tourism priorities into clear operational reforms, product opportunities, tools, and delivery plans

Provide analysis on service quality gaps, regulatory bottlenecks, tourism product gaps, investor requirements, institutional coordination challenges, and implementation constraints

Support RDB leadership to prioritize high-impact actions that improve the visitor experience, strengthen regulatory credibility, diversify Rwanda’s tourism offer, and improve investor confidence

Prepare concise briefs, decision papers, product opportunity notes, and implementation updates for senior government and RDB stakeholders

2. Hospitality Service Quality Standards & Regulation

Conduct a rapid diagnostic of current hospitality inspection, classification, and enforcement practices to identify key gaps, bottlenecks, and root causes

Support the design of a tiered hospitality service quality standards framework covering facilities, service delivery, and staff conduct

Develop practical tools that can be used by both hospitality operators and inspectors as a clear compliance reference and objective inspection benchmark

Develop an inspection operations guide setting out how inspections should be planned, conducted, documented, escalated, and followed up

Identify quick wins and prepare a short-term enforcement improvement roadmap to strengthen inspection consistency, regulatory credibility, and service quality follow-through

3. Tourism Product Diversification & Pipeline Development

Support RDB’s Tourism Office to develop a structured tourism product diversification pipeline aligned with NST2 priorities and Rwanda’s premium destination positioning

Map Rwanda’s current tourism product offer and identify priority gaps and opportunities across high-value and emerging tourism segments

Develop a framework for prioritizing tourism product opportunities based on strategic fit, market demand, investor appetite, feasibility, geographic spread, contribution to length of stay, and alignment with national targets

Support the Tourism Office to convert priority product categories into clear opportunity concepts and investor-facing propositions

Build and maintain a prioritized pipeline of tourism product opportunities, including new concepts, active investor leads, proposals under assessment, and opportunities requiring cross-government support

4. Tourism Investment Facilitation & Investor Assessment

Design a front-end investor assessment framework enabling the Tourism Office to evaluate investor seriousness, strategic fit, and project quality at the earliest stage of engagement

Assess incoming tourism investment proposals against agreed criteria, including investor seriousness, product quality, destination fit, commercial viability, sustainability, and potential contribution to Rwanda’s tourism objectives

Develop an investor journey and decision-point guide clarifying roles, responsibilities, handover points, and escalation channels across RDB departments and partner agencies

Develop and operationalise an investment monitoring tracker to record investor interactions, assessment outcomes, pipeline status, and next steps

Support follow-through on priority investor engagements, ensuring that bottlenecks are identified, escalated, and resolved in a timely manner

5. Coordination, Institutional Strengthening & Capacity Building

Establish a coordination embedding toolkit, including standardized templates, escalation protocols, and operating procedures for both tourism investment facilitation and quality service follow-through

Strengthening coordination between the Tourism Office, investment facilitation teams, regulatory counterparts, and relevant partner agencies

Design and deliver capacity-building sessions to equip Tourism Office staff and relevant counterparts to use the service quality tools, investor assessment framework, coordination protocols, and monitoring tracker independently

Support regular review routines with RDB teams to track