At a meeting to craft a post-COVID-19 recovery strategy, participants agreed on the need for timely disbursement of the $500 million stimulus package by Government.
The meeting drew participants from several sectors including Environment, Climate, Tourism, and Hospitality Industry Ministry, Zimbabwe Tourism Authority, Finance Ministry, Transport Ministry, youths in tourism, Tourism Business Council of Zimbabwe as well and Hospitality industry.
Tourism players also advocated for wider collaborations amongst themselves rather than competing against each other according to information from the meeting that took place in Harare this week.
The issue of pricing of tourism products was also discussed externally with most players agreeing that domestic tourism was the starting point to give impetus and lure international travellers.
Environment, Climate, Tourism and Hospitality Industry Minister Nqobizitha Mangaliso Ndlovu, who addressed the meeting emphasized the need to have a three-phased approach which starts by growing domestic tourism, regional the international market.
“Obviously, we are expecting that international tourism will take some bit of time to recover and we are looking at domestic tourism as an immediate source of relief and I think over time we have really not given it attention and it took centre stage today,” he said.
“We were able to look at critical issues that are inhibiting the growth of domestic tourism. We then looked at what needs to be done. We tackled issues to do with providing support structures. The sector highlighted that there are other enablers, there are other players who are providing services to the sector whose rates are quite high. They made mention of local authorities, electricity rates and the like.”
“This mandates us to have this broader discussions to see how best we can collaborate to drive down the cost, so that our locals can begin to travel but we are saying that’s the first phase of recovery domestic tourism. Beyond that we are seeing regional tourism coming back thankfully as a region we are really not hard it by Covid. We remain alert we’re not going to be complacent but so far we believe that we have reasonable numbers. It might not take long before the regional tourism roars into life, so we are getting ready for that as well” Ndlovu added.
Zimbabwe’s tourism sector could lose up to US$1 billion in potential revenue due to the Covid-19 pandemic according to local media.
Arts and craft practitioners called on Government to consider opening up spaces to act as markets and exhibitions for artists while observing the social distancing regulations.
The sector also agreed that the grounded national airline become operational to service domestic flights.