adminTHE country’s tourism leadership has been quite busy this year trying to take every opportunity available to get a slice of the huge cake which the industry represents.
Environment, Climate, Tourism and Hospitality Industry Minister, Nqobizitha Mangaliso Ndhlovu, has been leading from the front in this mission.
ZTA chief executive, Winnie Muchanyuka, has also been playing a massive role to ensure that we are not left behind as the world tries to find a way back to the heydays, before the pandemic, when the tourism industry was thriving.
Recently, we saw the ZTA enter into a promotional partnership agreement with South African Airways at the Arabian Travel Market in Dubai.
The ZTA, who exhibited at the ATM, made it clear this was part of their mission to reposition the country as a must-visit destination.
Muchanyuka said their focus in Dubai was to look at improving air access into destination Zimbabwe.
It has been a rough and tough time for the tourism industry, not only in Zimbabwe, but around the world.
In 2019, according to Forbes, global travel and tourism contributed an impressive US$8.9 trillion to the world’s GDP.
Then, Covid-19 struck and everything changed.
The results were staggering and, in the first 10 months of 2020 alone, it cost the tourism industry US$935 billion in revenue worldwide.
It became clear, as countries closed their borders and airlines ground their planes, that tourism was one of the hardest hit industries by the pandemic.
Africa and the Middle East recorded 74 percent and 81 percent drops respectively in the third quarter of 2022, compared to 2019.
Now that Covid-19 is no longer considered a global emergency by the United Nations, countries have been battling to try and recover from the crisis which engulfed one of the world’s biggest industries.
In Zimbabwe, we have seen relatively steady tourist inflows with arrivals of tourists.
The Dubai event was attended by over 50 travel trade professionals, who included tour operators, Destinations Management Companies, Agencies and Travel Writers.
On Tuesday, Zimbabwe’s tourism leaders signed a memorandum of agreement with their Eswatini counterparts in Durban, South Africa.
The pact was signed at the Africa Travel Indaba.
The country is participating at the expo as part of its drive to strengthen tourism destination promotion in the African continent while luring investments into the sector.
The MoU is intended to establish a legal framework for the advancement of institutional and business cooperation between the two parties.
It said the two tourism authorities will facilitate joint marketing of tourism products and the creation of promotional campaigns to boost domestic, regional, and international tourism, amongst other initiatives.
We need to see more of these initiatives and also a timeline, which will provide checks and balances, to show whether they have been a success or things didn’t go according to plan.
The ZTA will need to keep the nation updated on the progress and the benefits which have been accrued from all these partnerships to justify why we are taking part at such events.
Online Reporter