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Zimbabwe government injects cash to revive tourism
Zimbabwe’s government has injected R28,8m into its tourism authority for an emergency international marketing campaign to “rescue” the country’s ailing tourism industry.
Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) chief executive, Amos Midzi, said the money would be used primarily to appoint professional tourism attachés to Zimbabwean embassies, and to design and print new updated tourism brochures.
Mr Midzi said: “Tourism has always been one of Zimbabwe’s top foreign currency generators, but visitors numbers have plummeted due to political violence and the continuing bad press the country is receiving. “The government agrees that tourism is probably still one of the major factors for spearheading an economy recovery, and has therefore allocated both funds and other resources to help us remarket Zimbabwe’s image.”
The new tourism attachés will be appointed to embassies in London (UK), Frankfurt (Germany), New York (USA), Johannesburg (SA) and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia).
Mr Midzi added: “We are also designing and printing thousands of new brochures. The embassies ran out of tourism brochures mid-2001 when the ZTA ran out of funding.”
The new funding will also be used to establish tourism marketing boards in major markets, with members from the local tourist industry to encourage support of Zimbabwe. The first board has already been established in California in the US. Other new strategies for luring tourists back include a new emphasis on hosting international sporting events, such as golf tournaments, and special event tour packages for the solar eclipse and regional festivals.
“But, the most important new strategy is probably our realisation that we need to penetrate new markets in eastern Europe, Asia, and Russia. Travellers from our established markets in the rest of Europe and the Americas are staying away because of politics, sanctions, and fear of flying,” said Mr Midzi.
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