limukaniJudith Phiri
Business Reporter
THE Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) has called upon tourism players in Bulawayo to embrace and utilise the Sanganai/Hlanganani World Tourism Expo to position, market and promote their products and services.
The 15th edition of Expo is set to run from 13 to 15 October with physical attendance resuming this year. Speaking at a media briefing in Bulawayo on Tuesday, ZTA chief executive officer (CEO), Ms Winnie Muchanyuka urged Bulawayo tourism to utilise the event to showcase their products.
“We are excited to be hosting Sanganai/Hlanganani with physical attendance resuming this year. We are looking forward to a very exciting Expo that will bring the city alive tourism way. We are calling on the industry players here in Bulawayo to come and exhibit, this is the opportunity to showcase what the city has. It would be really be amiss if we had more exhibitors coming from outside Bulawayo and we had less from the city itself,” said Ms Muchanyuka.
She said they were also looking forward to exhibitors coming from surrounding cities such as Gweru, Kwekwe and Lupane among others to showcase their products.
Ms Muchanyuka said they were oversubscribed in terms of the number of buyers coming from countries such as the United States of America (USA), Germany and the United Kingdom (UK) as well as other frontline source markets such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), China and South Korea among others.
Bulawayo City Council (BCC) economic development officer, Mr Kholisani Moyo said the city was looking forward to the Expo.
“We are looking forward to the Sanganai/Hlanganani World Tourism Expo, it will increase the Gross Domestic Product of the city in terms of business and promote businesses. We are already preparing for the Expo asity will have some good results in terms of the economy of Bulawayo.”
ZTA spokesperson Mr Godfrey Koti said the tourism sector was one of the sectors that suffered the devastating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic with the 2020 quantified loss around US$1 billion in terms of financial receipts.
“We only made US$359 million dollars during that period, so the total loss was about US$1,3 billion dollars between the two years in terms of expected revenue. In terms of tourist receipts in 2019 we had closed the year on 2,3 million and in 2021 we received about 600 000 visitors only.”
Mr Koti said with the Expo they were looking forward to positioning and marketing Zimbabwe to the world as they were hoping to go back to the pre-Covid levels.
“As far as financial and tourist receipts, we want to go back maybe say to 2,3 million visitors and then hopefully make that US$1,5 billion that we were making just before we got into Covid-19.”
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