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Tourism and Hospitality permanent secretary Mrs Margaret Sangarwe made the remarks in an interview at the conclusion of the International Tourism Business Bourse in Berlin, Germany last Saturday.
Zimbabwe joined more than 170 countries for the annual event, tourism’s biggest business-to-business platform. ITB Berlin 2013 was by far the world’s largest meeting place of international tourism policy decision-makers and business leaders.
Among the luminaries were German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, representatives of the World Tourism Organisation, the Pacific Asia Travel Association, the World Travel and Tourism Council and more than 100 ministers of tourism and tourism state secretaries.
They met to help shape the future growth for the tourism industry. ITB Berlin ran from March 6 to March 10 2013.
Mrs Sangarwe said Zimbabwe would target all forthcoming major tourism events to market and promote the UNWTO event after failing to capitalise on the ITB Berlin show.
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“Resources are a constraint. But we have been trying to do as much as we can because most of the resources we require are for marketing and promotion . . . whatever we can produce bags, T-shirts whatever we can produce and give to people like you are seeing here.
“A lot of countries had all these bags and other material, which we do not have because of limited resources. As such, resources obviously affect our marketing and promotion exercise,” she said.
Government has found itself hard pressed for financial resources as it has struggled to secure about US$250 million required for the referendum on the draft constitution this week, to be followed by the general elections, scheduled for the first half of this year.
Mrs Sangarwe said the Ministry of Tourism and Hospitality had submitted a budget and the Ministry of Finance had looked at the options available.
“Some of the resources are available already and they have asked us to give them our budget on a monthly basis so that they know how much is required immediately and how much is required in two months.
“The whole budget we submitted to the Ministry of Finance is US$11 million. For UNWTO (assembly) US$6 million is required, and for our own preparations about US$5,5 million is required.
“On a monthly basis, what we have done is that for UNWTO requirements we have compiled everything and sent that to the tender board for them to start tender approvals because we need mostly equipment, office chairs and computers — so we have done a budget.
“The US$6 million is required now because we need to start procuring. For activities of the sub-committees, suich as marketing and promotion for this month we have requested around US$500 000.”
Government is now planning to undertake aggressive marketing of the country at all forthcoming mega tourism events, starting with the Indaba in South Africa and the Arabian Market, both to be held in May.
“We will try and take advantage of those shows to try to reach out to people in terms of inviting them to come for the UNWTO General Assembly.”
She was responding to enquiries from The Herald Business on why the country failed to capitalise on the ITB Berlin – the world’s largest travel show – to publicise the event wahich it will co-host with Zambia next August.
Zimabwe failed to take advantage of the ITB Berlin wahich was attended, virtually, by most people who matter in the travel and tourism industry. Ms Sangarwe attributed this failure to what she called “resource constraints”.
Online Reporter