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Noble Ncube, Business Reporter
THE local tourism industry needs extensive funding to fully harness the benefits of international tourists who have since made Africa their preferred choice of destination, an official has said.
According to a Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) report for last year, tourist arrivals increased by 10 percent during the period January to September 2015, compared to the same period in 2014. Africa, America, Europe and Oceania rose marginally while Asia and the Middle East declined quite substantially.
National Convention Bureau executive director Mrs Tessa Chikaponya said the local tourism sector was in need of adequate funding to fully realise full potential of the industry.
“Africa has been identified as a growing favourite destination by international tourists. Currently we are not among the top three countries that are harvesting from this development because of lack funding. We can only be in the top if we get the funding that we need to be able to implement plans that will boost our tourism revenues,” she said.
In other countries tourism is regarded as a big contributor in their GDPs.
Mrs Chikaponya said the local tourism sector needed to be fully funded so that it can also be part of the most preferred tourism destination in Africa.
She said during the just ended Sanganai/Hlanganani expo, they held a capacitating workshop for local tourism operators to be able to work with international incentive travel agencies.
“We hosted the international incentive travel workshop for our local tourism operators to capacitate them with knowhow of handling international travel agencies. We were basically preparing them to attract international travel agencies and be able to stay with them,” she said.
International tourist arrivals grew by 4,3 percent in the first eight months of 2015 fuelled by strong results in Europe and consolidating the trend of recent years. International tourists travelling the world between January and August 2015 reached 810 million, 33 million more than in the same period of 2014.
The growth in arrivals into Zimbabwe was generally backed by growth in the country’s traditional markets such as the United Kingdom and America in addition to the increase in arrivals from mainland Africa.
Africa has been earmarked as the preferred tourism destination as evidenced by world tourism rankings that are compiled by the United Nations (UNWTO).
In 2013, there were over 55,7 million international tourist arrivals to Africa, an increase of 5,4 percent over 2012.
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