Tourism and Hospitality Industry Minister Barbara Rwodzi says the impending Tourism Amendment Bill will go a long in boosting domestic and rural tourism in the country.
Zimbabwe has largely done well in terms of attracting international tourists from across the world, but has relatively performed poorly in attracting locals, including people who stay in the vicinity of the famous attractions.
Various reasons have been offered, chief among them the exorbitant prices and lack of awareness.
However, Speaking in the National Assembly while answering a question from from Honourable Mutokonyi, Minister Rwodzi said they have been doing a lot through the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority, adding that the impending Bill will help boost the efforts.
‘’Let me say that domestic tourism is the travel of our local people to our attractions. We continue to promote that through ensuring that our Zimbabwe Tourism Authority which has a mandate for marketing the destination, continues doing what they have to do.
‘’Yes, Forbes indicates that internationally we have done quite well and we need to be doing the same locally. We continue marketing our destination to the locals, that is number one. However, we have to ensure that the prices are affordable for our locals so that we encourage our locals to travel locally but also to afford the entrance and the use of our facilities across the country.
‘’So may I say, Honourable Speaker Sir, can we have support from the Honourable Members through the amendment of the Bill that we think, through that amendment, somehow through grading and standardisation of our facilities, the prices would be good for our locals to afford to go to our attractions and to use all the facilities across,’’ she said.
Rural Tourism set for major boost
The tourism minister also indicated that her ministry is working to boost rural tourism through product development and marketing using the Zimbabwe Tourism Fund and support from, treasury.
‘’Going to the rural tourism, through the strategies that we are putting in place to ensure that the President will achieve an upper middle-income society, he has introduced a strategy of Government programs and projects of leaving no one and no place behind so that by the time we get to 2030, even those in the rural areas will also be economically benefiting through tourism.
‘’We are now, through Zimbabwe Tourism Fund and the Treasury, working on product development in the rural areas because in those rural areas, we also have very good attractions, we also have museums in the rural areas and we also have monuments in the rural areas.
‘’I will give an example of the Africa map that we discovered in Zaka. We need to have accommodation facilities around that area, we need to have eating facilities for the food for the people who visit around that area. Now, when it comes to accommodation, we have a program that we are spearheading to start next year in the first quarter, of asking communities to give us space to work together with them; that we create or construct accommodation so that the communities themselves will be the ones who own accommodation facilities. Of course, then talk to the DDC and the rural areas to construct restaurants also in these areas.
‘’However, areas of interest would be those areas that are around the dams, so that we create a forward integration, continuous business for those rural communities. This is how we want to promote rural tourism. However, we are finding a lot of interest from the diaspora. We are speaking a lot with the diaspora because those are the ones who come back home and most of the relatives, particularly the parents, are living in rural settings. They are the ones that are on top of investing in the rural areas for rural tourism and we continue to do that. I submit,’’ she said.-
