ZTA meets businesses over pricing

Business Editor
THE Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) yesterday met tourism sector players and suppliers to deliberate on the impact of the recent price increases on the travel industry and the implications on the country’s destination image.

In an update after the meeting the tourism authority said the gathering discussed a wide range of issues, which include pricing of the tourism products, the state of tourism and also sought to find ways of circumventing the prevailing economic challenges within the sector.

There was a general consensus that the tourism sector was facing challenges with the cost of doing business and eventually pricing the product, it said.

The widespread concern is the rising prices that are likely to dent the country’s destination image and make the industry less competitive, unattractive.

“It was a very successful and very fruitful meeting and we discussed everything. It was a no holds barred meeting and everybody was very clear on the issues discussed. I am very happy that they (operators) will rein each other and in particular the Tourism Business Council will ensure operators do not come up with ridiculous charges,” said ZTA chief executive Mr Karikoga Kaseke.

He said the prices were chasing away especially foreign tourists and therefore the intervention was necessary.

“I am certain that it (pricing challenges) will be resolved by the end of this week,”said Mr Kaseke.

Tourism Business Council president, Mr Paul Matamisa, also said the engagement was fruitful.

“The meeting was very fruitful in that we managed to bridge the gap of understanding of the market forces that are currently prevailing in our markets. In particular how we deal with the US dollar. We also spoke about issues of the FCA (foreign currency) accounts, nostro accounts and so on, how they’re going to be looked at and how we are going to be dealing with them going forward,” he said.

Mr Matamisa said banks seemed to have different policies on how they look at the foreign currency accounts as well as the RTGS accounts or local accounts.

“It doesn’t look like there is a common way of doing things and that creates a lot of problems for operators,” he said.

Mr Matamisa said the RBZ must intervene so that there is one system that is operating in all banks.

The new dispensation under President Emmerson Mnangagwa has pledged to open Zimbabwe for business and attracting more investors in different economic sectors through improving the ease of doing business. The tourism unit is one of the key economic sectors.