adminChinese cuisine and culture at the Harare International Conference Centre in the inaugural country partnership day.
Referred to as the China Day, locals will get the chance to mingle with Chinese businessmen and also watch a cultural ensemble that is set to perform in the HICC main auditorium during lunch.
This is the first time that Sanganai/Hlanganani, as a brand, has had a country partner and the arrangement is meant to boost tourist arrivals from countries seen to be doing well in promoting arrivals into Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe International Travel and Tours (ZITT) are partnering the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) in hosting the Chinese delegation of over 60 exhibitors, buyers and journalists from the Asian country.
In an interview, ZITT deputy general manager, Eddie Sanyanga, said the Zimbabwean market has warmed up to the Chinese because it is now easier for tourists coming into the country to feel at home.
“There are a number of Chinese restaurants now in Zimbabwe and there is even Chinese transport available locally so it’s easier for them to feel at home. We have different programmes lined up, we have invited a Chinese band to come and different Chinese restaurants will be offering a variety of Chinese cuisine for the locals to sample.
“The band will be performing in the HICC main auditorium at lunch time. We are also trying to bring in different Chinese businessmen in Harare so that the locals can interact with the local business people because you never know you can also get to meet investors,” said Mr Sanyanga.
He added that currently ZITT brings in, on average, 50 tourists a month from China with 70 percent coming on holiday with the rest scouting for potential areas to invest in and try to take advantage of the business opportunities available in Zimbabwe.
Meanwhile, ZTA chief operating officer Mr Givemore Chidzidzi said the exhibitors were happy with the venue and the quality of exhibitions saying, as an authority, they had scored a significant victory in terms of satisfying the needs of the industry.
“It pays to listen to what the exhibitors want because we listened to their pleas to say they would want us to go back to the HICC and they really supported that move. We would have been really disappointed had we moved and the exhibitors had not turned up. The challenge is now upon us and the whole tourism industry to make sure that we now contain the growth of the show because next year it’s going to be bigger,” said Mr Chidzidzi.
He said this year’s event had digressed from the norm of holding conferences along with the exhibition, as in previous editions, after exhibitors complained that they could not be in two places at the same time.
“You might be aware that if you hold a conference during exhibition time, people are torn apart as they cannot manage being at the conference and at the stand at the same time. We have had a sizeable number of exhibitors complaining that they would have wanted to attend a conference but could not. It’s not every exhibitor who has a big company and can spare people to go and attend conferences while some are at
the stand. The tourism industry is made up of small to medium enterprises and you’ll find they have one or two people to man the stand.
“What we are doing as ZTA is to schedule a tourism conference separate from Sanganai because when you have a tourism conference we need to deal with topical issues and we need full attendance and we also need people to attend at the correct levels,” said Mr Chidzidzi.
Online Reporter