Halfway House Hotel loses its glitter

Sikhumbuzo Moyo, Senior Reporter

“The Halfway House Hotel offers guests affordable accommodation. Conveniently situated halfway between Bulawayo and Victoria Falls, the hotel was built using local stones, teak and mopani poles. Guests stay in fresh and clean en-suite rooms with hot showers and comfortable beds. Snack menus have a dish to suit every taste.

Meals can be taken either in the dining room, in the cool of the bar or outside under the Bougainvillaea gazebo. Close to the hotel, there is also a fuel station, curio shop, butchery and tea garden. ”

This is how Tracks4Africa, a South African-based travel agent that offers clients from all over the world with GPS maps for easy navigation of the African terrain, describes Halfway House Hotel.

From the way Tracks4Africa describes the place, a client cannot wait to visit the place, either just for a stopover to relax after a long drive.

However, if Tracks4Africa were to drive through the place now, they would probably wish the earth would open and swallow them, for the Halfway House Hotel is now an eyesore.

While the buildings and the rooms are still intact, its outside appearance is far from eye-catching. Its grass-thatched roof needs fixing.

Langton Masunda, who runs the hotel, however, says its complete turnaround is now a matter of time as they have started extensive renovation works and is sure that by the start of the festive season, it will be as good as new.

He has already gathered enough bundles of thatch. Like most players in the tourism and hospitality sector, Masunda said Halfway House Hotel was not spared the effects of Covid-19.

Tourism is Zimbabwe’s third largest sector after mining and agriculture and has the potential to play a significant role in Zimbabwe’s economic recovery but tourist arrivals to the country fell by 40 percent in 2021, to 375 799 from 630 369 in 2020, due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Accohttps://youtu.be/EVTtEgLzNX4rding to the International Monetary Fund, tourism receipts worldwide are not expected to recover to 2019 levels until 2023 and the shock in tourism-dependent economies will be far worse. Major tourist areas in Zimbabwe were on life support during the pandemic with a mere 34 000 tourists visiting the majestic Victoria Falls in 2020 compared to more than 300 000 in 2019.

“We are now in the process of refurbishing this place, we have already finished rehabilitating the whole sewer system and have so far gathered over 4 000 bundles of thatch for re-thatching of all the buildings. A running concern needs to generate revenue in order to plough it back into projects like renovations so as to keep up the expected to standards.

“If you go to Victoria Falls now, you will notice that a number of hotels are busy renovating because they have started getting some clients unlike during those lockdown months, which is also what we are doing here and I promise you, very soon, this place will be completely different from what you see now.

“The buildings are okay but the major component that needs redoing is the roofing of which the materials are already on site,” said Masunda.

While it is generally known as Halfway House Hotel, Masunda said the “hotel” is actually a lodge with a restaurant and a bar.
“This place is surrounded by farmers and crucially it’s in an area where there is a lot of international trophy hunting but as alluded to earlier, for three years the whole world battled Covid-19, international borders were shut down and that meant no hunting clients were coming down, which also affected revenue for the farmers just like us.

“Some of these clients would usually book with us here and these are people who don’t stay for just a single night.

“There is a symbiotic relationship between farmers and their clients so when they are not in the bush hunting, they relax here, having their drinks and so forth, in the meantime pushing sales in the bar and the restaurant, sadly all those revenue streams were shut down,” said Masunda.

He said they are also feeling the effects of sanctions as some trophy hunting clients from the United States of America are barred from hunting in the country.

“There is some light though, business is now slowly picking up and soon we shall be on our feet again,” said Masunda.