Digital agenda and AI: What it means for local tourism

Lloyd Makonya
Correspondent
A TRAVELLER sitting thousands of kilometres away from Zimbabwe may ask an artificial intelligence assistant a deceptively simple question: Where should I go in Africa for wildlife, culture, heritage and an authentic local experience?
The answer generated by that machine can influence where the traveller spends thousands of dollars.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the new frontier of tourism.
AI is no longer merely a futuristic technology discussed in technology conferences. It is increasingly becoming part of how travellers search for destinations, construct itineraries, compare accommodation, translate information, navigate unfamiliar places and decide what experiences are worth paying for.
This is why the theme for World Tourism Day 2026, to be commemorated this Sunday, September 27, is particularly significant: ‘Digital Agenda and Artificial Intelligence to Redesign Tourism’.
UN Tourism said the theme will examine how digital transformation and AI can enhance visitor experiences, improve operational efficiency and support more sustainable tourism.
For Zimbabwe, however, the question should go beyond whether the country is ready to use AI. The more fundamental question is if Zimbabwe is sufficiently visible in the digital systems through which the next generation of tourists will discover the world?
Zimbabwe enters this conversation from a position of both opportunity and urgency. Recent figures presented during the 2026 Sanganai/Hlanganani/Dzimbahwe World Tourism Expo indicate that domestic tourism trips increased from about five million in the first half of 2025 to 6,4 million in the first half of 2026, while tourism investment rose to US$132,3 million during the same period.
Tourism receipts were reported at US$537 million in the first half of 2026, up from US$508 million in the corresponding period.
These figures demonstrate that tourism is not a peripheral activity. It is an important economic ecosystem involving airlines, hotels, restaurants, transport operators, tour guides, museums, conservation agencies, farmers, artists, cultural practitioners, curio producers and communities.
Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion Minister, Professor Mthuli Ncube, said the sector’s financial performance highlights growing economic value from visitors beyond headline traffic volumes.
“This is a significant development which demonstrates that the recovery is, not only reflected in the number of tourists entering the country, but also in the amount of economic value being generated from tourism,” said Professor Ncube at the 19th edition of the Sanganai/Hlanganani/Dzimbahwe World Tourism Investment Expo Forum.
Key to note is that, the marketplace in which these players compete has fundamentally changed.
Zimbabwe had approximately 6,54 million internet users and 2,6 million social-media user identities by October 2025, according to DataReportal’s Digital 2026 Zimbabwe report.
Mobile connections stood at 16,2 million, equivalent to about 95 percent of the population. The implication is profound. A tourism product can physically exist without being digitally discoverable. A beautiful waterfall, historic monument, traditional village, mountain trail or community tourism enterprise can be perfectly real, yet commercially invisible to someone planning a holiday from Berlin, Beijing, London, Melbourne or New York.
In an AI-mediated travel environment, digital invisibility can increasingly become tourism invisibility.
Imagine a traveller asking an AI system to design a seven-day Zimbabwe itinerary.
Traditionally, a travel agent might recommend Victoria Falls, Hwange and perhaps Great Zimbabwe. That question creates an opportunity for destinations such as Nyanga, Vumba, Chimanimani and the wider Manicaland tourism circuit provided the information needed to recommend them is digitally available, accurate, structured and sufficiently rich.
This is where Zimbabwe’s digital agenda must become much more than posting attractive photographs on Facebook. The country needs to make its tourism knowledge machine-readable. An AI system needs reliable information about attractions, opening times, prices, accommodation, transport, activities, accessibility, languages, cultural significance, seasons, safety information and booking options.
It also needs credible descriptions of places that have historically received little international marketing attention. If that information does not exist online, is outdated, scattered across different websites or available only through social-media posts, an AI system may simply recommend destinations about which it has better data. This creates a new form of the tourism visibility gap.
The competition is no longer only between destinations with better roads, hotels or marketing budgets. It is increasingly between destinations whose stories and tourism data are digitally legible and those whose stories remain buried in brochures, archives and institutional filing cabinets.
For Manicaland, this presents an extraordinary opportunity. The province possesses a tourism portfolio that is far more diverse than the conventional image of Zimbabwean tourism.
Forbes Border Post alone recorded 145 077 arrivals in 2024, representing roughly nine percent of Zimbabwe’s 1,61 million international arrivals that year. Yet the challenge is converting movement through the province into tourism consumption within the province.
This is precisely where AI could make a difference. Instead of merely passing through Mutare, an AI-powered destination assistant could identify a heritage tour in Mutare, a visit to the Mutare Museum, a local cuisine, a community cultural experience and accommodation facilities in Mutare.
The technology will connect the traveller to experiences that already exist. The future of tourism does not necessarily require Zimbabwe to invent hundreds of new attractions. It requires the country to make existing attractions easier to discover, understand, compare, book and experience.
Zimbabwe can begin modestly with a national: “Zimbabwe Tourism Intelligence Layer” which will be a trusted digital information ecosystem linking tourism authorities, museums, national parks, heritage institutions, accommodation providers, transport companies, and related tourism businesses. That is where AI moves from being a marketing gimmick to becoming a destination-management tool.
It can help forecast visitor demand, analyse visitor sentiment, support environmental monitoring and help tourism authorities understand what visitors are searching for but failing to find.
Indeed, this is already entering Zimbabwe’s tourism policy conversation.
At the 2026 Sanganai/Hlanganani/Dzimbahwe Expo, President Emmerson Mnangagwa called for greater use of AI and digital technologies to improve destination visibility, manage visitor flows, forecast demand, reduce overcrowding and strengthen environmental monitoring.
The ICT ministry has also highlighted the possibility of using AI to transform tourism statistics from delayed reporting towards more real-time, predictive intelligence.
This can fundamentally change how tourism is managed.
The most encouraging thing is that Zimbabwe is not starting from zero. The Ministry of Tourism and Hospitality Industry, with World Bank support, has implemented the Let’s Get Digital tourism upskilling programme, designed to help tourism enterprises improve websites, social-media presence, digital content, audience targeting, digital marketing plans and distribution through online travel agencies and aggregators.
The Zimbabwe Tourism Authority has also introduced online e-registration for designated tourism facilities, allowing operators to submit registration and renewal information digitally. More recently, the ZTA has been pursuing ICT partnerships aimed at strengthening digital infrastructure, including computers, printers and Wi-Fi connectivity for tourism facilities and offices. These developments suggest that the conversation is already moving from whether Zimbabwe should digitise tourism to how deeply digital technologies should be embedded in the tourism ecosystem.
It is important to also not get overexcited about the opportunities offered by AI, there is a danger.
Technology can also reproduce inequality, UN Secretary-General António Guterres, in his 2026 World Tourism Day message, warned that AI could concentrate tourists around the same destinations and platforms while leaving smaller destinations behind. He called for investment in digital skills, wider access to technology and participation by tourism workers, communities and emerging destinations.
If AI simply learns from the most visible tourism websites, the destinations with the largest marketing budgets may become even more visible. Victoria Falls will remain highly discoverable. Hwange will remain highly discoverable, but smaller community tourism enterprise in Buhera may suffer. This is why the digital transformation of tourism must also become a digital inclusion agenda.
Zimbabwe should also not overlook that, tourism is also a vehicle for preserving and commercialising culture, heritage and indigenous knowledge without stripping them of their meaning.
AI can help digitise oral histories, map cultural landscapes, document traditional crafts, create multilingual heritage interpretation and connect cultural practitioners with visitors.
Such digitisation must be undertaken responsibly and local communities should have a voice in how their cultural knowledge is represented and used. Sensitive knowledge should not simply be placed into databases because technology makes it possible.
The objective should not be to turn Zimbabwean culture into data. It should be to use technology to ensure that Zimbabwean communities have greater control over how their stories are discovered, interpreted and valued. The human being must remain at the centre.
There is also a temptation to imagine that the future tourist will interact exclusively with machines, that would be a mistake.
Tourism is ultimately about human connection. A chatbot can recommend Chimanimani, but it cannot replace Collin a knowledgeable local guide taking you through the rugged Chimanimani Mountain trails.
An algorithm can translate a traditional story, it cannot replace the elder who carries the memory of that story.
AI can recommend a restaurant but it cannot reproduce the warmth of the person who welcomes a visitor into the dining experience. The future should therefore not be AI instead of people rather it should be AI helping people deliver better tourism.
As Zimbabwe commemorates World Tourism Day 2026, the country therefore faces a strategic choice. Either to treat AI as another fashionable technology to be discussed at conferences. Or it can recognise that the digital transformation of tourism is becoming a fundamental issue of destination competitiveness. The country needs a tourism digital architecture that brings together accurate destination data, booking systems, maps, heritage information, conservation data, visitor statistics, community enterprises and local tourism products.
Zimbabwe needs a national strategy for ensuring that when a traveller asks an AI system about Africa, Zimbabwe’s story is not merely present, it is accurate, diverse and compelling. World Tourism Day 2026 therefore presents Zimbabwe with more than a technological challenge.