The ManicaPost
Kudzanai Gerede Business Correspondent
Tourism stakeholders have been urged to rectify the massive infrastructural deficiencies, lack of competitive pricing and improper conduct by law enforcement details and ZIMRA officials on the country’s ports of entry and road blocks as major grievances highlighted by visitors in a latest report.
This comes as a blow to the country’s tourism aspirations which targets five million visitors annually by year 2020 that will spring the sector into a US$ 5 billion tourism economy.
Currently, the country received close to two million visitors translating to just below US$ 1,5 billion in tourism receipts. According to the Visitor Exit Survey (VES) compiled by Zimbabwe Statistical Agency (ZIMSTAT) released on Tuesday at a hotel in Harare, of the 38 680 foreign tourists polled over a 12 month period between 2015 and November 2016, about 43 per cent cited police harassment as a reason they would not recommend the country to potential tourists while 14,7 per cent complained of ZIMRA officials harassment.
“In order to retain reputation of Zimbabwe being a hospitable nation there is need to ensure continuous training of frontline personnel who interact with visitors creating the first and last impressions on the destination such as Immigration, customs and police,” read the ZIMRA report.
The report to be used for the compilation of the country’s inaugural Tourism Satellite Account to determine expenditure and revenue in the sector further revealed that most tourists found the destination too expensive compared to other regional destinations.
Analysts say the latest report calls for some soul-searching among tourism stakeholders if the sector is to continue on a recovery path starting with realigning of cost structures to make the destination competitive.
Despite abundant wild life and natural picturesque endowments across the country and various recreational activities for leisure, the VES showed that the majority (31 percent) of the country’s visitors came to visit their friends and relatives, followed by transit visitors (29,5 percent) who just passed through the country on their way to other countries mainly South Africa which has a fairly competitive advantage. Only 18,2 percent of the visitors came for leisure with 5,1 percent accounting for religious tourism and the remaining small proportion accounted for business visitors and other reasons.
However experts are mainly concerned with the paltry figures of visitors coming in for leisure as they are the main drivers of tourist spending through hotel bookings and various recreational activities. This has been dampened by firming of the US dollar against major currencies making the local destination less attractive.
Last year, official figures from Zimbabwe Tourism Authority showed a two percent decrease to 36 percent in national hotel room occupancy during the first quarter.
Mutare and Vumba hotels which have a combined room capacity of 537 were 31 per cent utilised during the period with the bulk of revenue receipts for hoteliers dominated by the domestic market.
Zimbabwe Council for Tourism (ZCT) chief executive officer Mr Paul Matamisa said there was need for a comprehensive approach to the findings of the survey when addressing issues raised as they have a deep rooted impact on the perception of international tourists and a direct effect on the sector performance.
“If you are going to Bulawayo and there are 20 roadblocks you spend time stopping on 20 roadblocks. In other countries you do not see so many roadblocks on roads to tourist resorts. That has to be dealt with effectively. They are doing a tremendous damage to tourism industry,” he said.
