Celebrating, living our tourism brand

now Harare on the 12th day in 1890.

September is also the month the Americans would want to forget for the famous terrorist bombings. It is the month whose history we have changed for the better in Zimbabwe.
The whole of September has been set aside as the month to celebrate our tourism and hospitality, our well-thought and well-coined brand, “Zimbabwe, A World of Wonders!” This year’s celebrations are crucial in that they psyche up our industry for a bid that the country has deposited with the United Nations World Tourism Organisation to host the General Assembly in 2013 in Victoria Falls.

As we celebrate nationally before joining the international community on September 27 to commemorate the World Tourism Day, our focus should be on drumming up support from the international community to vote for our bid. Since September 1, the tourism and hospitality industry has been engaged in a multifarious array of commemorative projects and programmes, centred on Zimbabwe’s tourism tapestries.

Cultural festivals in Murehwa and Masvingo, the Ministerial Braai hosted for diplomats and industry by Tourism and Hospitality Industry Walter Mzembi and public lectures at universities have already made the much needed hype.
This is the time to celebrate and live our brand. It is the time to show the world that Zimbabwe is organised and raring to showcase its tourist attractions.

Several other activities are still lined up and these include a gala in Masvingo, which is hosting the major event. This is significant, not because the minister in question comes from Masvingo, but that ZTA has made sure that the final event is held in a different town every year.
Nyanga and Victoria Falls have also been previous hosts of the prestigious event and Masvingo deserves to host it this year because of its massive tourism industry, pegged around the citadel of civilisation, the Great Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is a hothouse nurturing tourist attractions whose attractiveness can easily match any tourist destination in the world.

Man and natural phenomenon have consciously and subconsciously sired tourist attractions that make Zimbabwe a secret bank account of precious tourism resources. Wildlife species in compact vestiges of jungles probably found nowhere else on earth, have stood the test of time as there, wild animals and vegetation still enjoy the splendour and grandeur of the time.
Wildlife roams wild and free, courtesy of the National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority and private conservancies. Government and all other stakeholders, with ZTA as a cornerstone, have invested heavily in the tourism and hospitality industry, so much that tourism has been identified as one of the four major pillars of the national economic turnaround programme.

The full import of this instalment is the importance Zimbabwe has placed on the tourism and hospitality industry.
The tourism and hospitality industry – these courageous men and women – have decided through ZTA and the parent ministry to dedicate the whole month of September to celebrating the tourist side of Zimbabwe.

Wherever we are and whoever we are, let us live and celebrate the brand, for this is the time when every tourist aspect of Zimbabwe should be celebrated.
It is the time to visit our own tourist destinations and promote each other’s business in the interest of the tourism month.