Online Reporter
THE continuing rapid growth in tourism, both international and domestic, shows the combined efforts of Government and the private sector, with everyone pulling in the same direction.
They are making a large difference.
Thousands of Zimbabweans earn a good living from tourism and the industry is both labour intensive and allows a range of investment, from small family businesses all the way to giant resorts, with most of Zimbabwe’s growing capacity coming from the family and community investments.
Important Government contributions are in building up the required infrastructure that tourists demand, from the decent roads that are so important for domestic tourists to drive to their destinations and for the foreign tourists to be able to move easily between attractions, making far more of their holiday in the country.
Besides the road network, the Government has been expanding and upgrading airports, so those flying in and then around the country can benefit from state-of-the-art facilities and airlines can bring in their passengers easily and safely with minimal fuss. The land border posts, starting with the huge Beitbridge Border Post, have moved rapidly under the Second Republic from overcrowded and complicated points of entry to something many times more efficient and user friendly.
This sort of Government investment is important.
When someone lands at a major international airport, they want to be whisked through customs and immigration swiftly, being made to feel welcome rather than some sort of nuisance.
The same applies at a land border, and the fact that someone using Beitbridge who carries the right documents, a fairly simple set, can now be on their way within 20 minutes shows that we can maintain security, collect our taxes and still make people welcome and wanted.
We possibly need to combine modern technology and good administration to speed up the issuance of business and tourist visas for nationals of those countries who need an advance visa.
The modern passport with its digital data should make it a lot easier and there should be rapid processing of those who are making a second or subsequent visit since the main checks were done properly the first time.
But we have already made tremendous progress, as our Forbes magazine rating of being the number one tourist destination shows.
Part of the scoring that goes into that rating comes from the experiences of travellers who have found that efficient and sensible border staff means that they spend their time on holiday, not queuing at counters.
The efficient border post operations become very important as we tap into the transfrontier parks, since someone may well be visiting three or four countries in a single trip and often crossing a frontier.
They want those crossings to be natural and rapid and it should be possible for us to collaborate with our neighbours for a regional visa.
This is now a major attraction within the bulk of European Union, where a single visa from a single embassy or point of entry allows a tourist to travel around most of the area without any further bother. African regions must emulate this, the single set of entry formalities to enter the region, and then easy and seamless travel.
While this festive season has been seeing influxes at the major tourist resorts, Zimbabweans are travelling more and looking for good value local holidays. A lot of those locally owned hotels and resorts are now seeing high occupancy rates from the locals, plus their relatives in the diaspora.
Diaspora visitors will become ever more important as foreign-based households want to visit their own country and show their children where they come from. Cultural tourism seems to have a glowing future especially with this market, although others also want to meet the people, not just take photographs of elephants.
Recent efforts to bring our cultural heritage, modernised where necessary, into the centre of our lives will obviously benefit tourism.
Simply having traditional dishes and new menu items built on the old ingredients and an innovative chef will so more.
We do not have to try and copy the past, rather ensure that we have a living culture that can display our heritage.
Zimbabwe is, geographically, a modestly-sized country.
This means that a visitor or a tourist or a family wanting a decent break is not confined by long travel times to a single resort or a single area.
They can move around and see a lot more and enjoy a far wider spread of experiences should they want to.
This is important when we look at international tourism.
A day trip lets a visitor see the Victoria Falls and have a decent lunch. But when you start adding in attractions in surrounding areas, you are building up a multi-day holiday.
We tend to concentrate on the number of people arriving, and that total is important, but we also need to be looking at total bed nights and average stays.
At the same time, we need to make sure that we never neglect our domestic tourists, Zimbabweans taking advantage of their rising standards of living as the economy grows rapidly to see more of their country, not just the rural area where their family originates which has tended to dominate destinations, which has ended to dominate internal travel until very recently.
Travel and tourism offers so many opportunities to so many people that the sector will grow so long as we all who are involved remain determined to offer good value, and a warm welcome.
dyton mupawaenda