The situation in Zimbabwe is very fluid. The country is grappling with many issues of national importance in every sphere of life: be it economic, social and political. However, at the same time, the country is preparing for the epic UNWTO General Assembly scheduled for next year. Local hospitality firms seem to be struggling to spruce up. The Sunday Mail Business Editor DARLINGTON MUSARURWA (DM) last week spoke to the Minister of Tourism and Hospitality Industry, Engineer Walter Mzembi (WM), for an insight.

DM: There seems to be a lot of hype — probably justified — about the upcoming United Nations World Tourism Organisation General Assembly scheduled for next year, but apparently little is being said about the local hospitality industry. So, how are we faring so far this year?
WM: The hype comes out of the nation’s realisation that the UNWTO General Assembly is arguably Zimbabwe’s biggest public relations event at that multi-lateral level perhaps since independence. In the past, similar PR events on that scale that would match the UNWTO assembly that come to mind would be the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm) in 1992, which was held more than a decade ago; the World Solar Summit in 1996 and, more recently, the Comesa (Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa) Summit. But they don’t come near the general assembly in terms of scale and the kind of packaging that comes with an event of that grand scale. We are talking about 200 countries converging on the Victoria Falls; it’s like the world visiting Zimbabwe. So, the hype is born out of a realisation that this is the biggest PR event.

Beyond that, it is also the most significant sign of Zimbabwe’s international re-engagement since the life of the inclusive Government. It also attests to the level of excitement around this event and the benefits that it is set to bring with it. Having said that, we continue to get reminded of the significance of this event by His Excellency President Robert Mugabe at various fora, at every opportunity. He reminds the nation about the significance of this event and the benefits it will bring with it in terms of international diplomacy, in terms of brand endorsement, in terms of destination endorsement and, ultimately, in terms of the sectoral benefits accruing to tourism as a sector.

It is also important to unpack just the venue itself, the Victoria Falls — by benchmarking it to other falls in the world: The Iguazu in Brazil, the Niagara Falls at the border between Canada and the United States and begin to really interrogate whether we are leveraging sufficiently enough with the Victoria Falls to the extent that the Niagara Falls is doing to the economies of Canada and the United States. For example, the Niagara Falls is a $30 billion economy, with 30 million visitors per year. It is an economy within an economy.

Nearer home, the Victoria Falls is one of the Wonders of the World and is the only natural wonder of the world in Africa. Between us and Zambia, we hardly surpass the half a billion-dollar mark in terms of revenue, and visitors between the two states arriving at the Falls do not exceed 1,5 million. So, the gap between what the Niagara is doing in terms of performance and what we are doing is an economic opportunity that we now seek to showcase to the world and say this is going to be the catalyst for investment into the country.  The UNWTO has just confirmed that we have received in the last month or so numerous offers that we are busy doing due diligences on; numerous offers that we are interrogating as to their authenticity; numerous offers that we are also assessing as to their national significance, and offers from international capital of individual parcels of between $200 to $300 million. Some are $400 million and so forth, but we are still testing them in terms of their value to the nation before we bring them up for discussion with our superiors and, of course, through the (inter-ministerial) committee that Vice-President Mujuru (Joice) chairs.

There is definitely investment excitement about the general assembly, which will also benefit the hospitality industry that you seem so much to be concerned about. It not yet time to draft them in because discussions have been taking place at a much higher level than at sectoral player level. We think that in the next month their involvement will become a de- facto requirement.

DM: But has there been any demonstrable increase in tourist arrivals so far this year?
WM: Well, we don’t want to beat our own drums, but if you go by the World Travel and Tourism Council, which is the international industry body on tourism, it will tell you that we are the second-fastest-growing tourism economy in the world by GDP contribution (Gross Domestic Product) — second only to China, albeit on the back of a smaller GDP base. But we are doing very well, acclaimed and recognised by world bodies.

And the mere fact that they have all chosen to converge in both our countries of Zimbabwe and Zambia is testimony to the fact that they realise that we are a very competing and upcoming product. We are on a serious rebound. What is actually missing is financial support, which we are now mobilising from other sources.

We don’t just look to fiscus now. In any event, the hospitality industry has always survived by shopping for funds over the counter. We had, however, hoped that since tourism had been identified as one of the four pillars on which economic recovery will be underpinned, we will get some measure of fiscal support to allow our operators to dip their hands into a more competitive fund to retool, re-spruce, re-kit, and the absence of that fund manifested itself more recently in Bulawayo when standards were visibly down. It actually shows you that the sector hasn’t been supported and has been stretched to the limit by the rebound of the sector at a time when there has been no complementary and matching funding to support it.

DM: It seems that many of the local hotels are still struggling to spruce up their facilities despite Government intervention. What has really been the problem and do you think that they will be ready by the time we host the UNWTO General Assembly?

WM: They are not spared the vagaries of this economy. When you talk about distressed industries in Bulawayo, if you don’t include tourism when Matabeleland is the capital of tourism, then it means that our planning is amiss somewhere.
I see this stampede for the distressed funds and other rescue facilities that do not quite take into account the hospitality sector — mainly because most of them may not be headquartered in Bulawayo — but these are industries that are employing people in the region.

One would hope that we clean up our lenses and try and help those industries that are in situ and have infrastructure and established assets and begin to assist them as much as we are doing other industries such as textile and manufacturing.
We must recognise the importance of tourism as an industry that generates $1,2 trillion globally in direct earnings and $6 trillion in GDP impact.

But it has to package its case so that it is heard by planners and I am happy that in this country His Excellency decided to create a separate home for it. The results have not been displeasing.

DM: There has been talk of a tourism revolving fund. What is actually happening to this mulled initiative?
WM: The fund is coming. It’s coming through private sector flows that we are working on.
And we had to find a stimulus in order to motivate the revolving fund and the stimulus in actually the UNWTO General Assembly. That alone has become the magnet of building around it a tourism revolving fund for the re-tooling, refurbishing and re-upgrading of the sector.

We would hope that beyond it, if we had the parcel of money as we appear to be closely getting to, we can then get matching components from banks.
We can then come up with a commercial parcel that will live beyond the UNWTO.

DM: But how big a fund are you looking at?
WM: So far indications are that we could get up to $30 million and get a bank that would match that amount. $60 million will be a good starting point.
DM: Last year, Government through the Ministry of Tourism and Hospitality Industry indicated that the country was in the process of adopting a satellite tourism accounting system to better account for arrivals and revenue. What progress has been made in this regard?

WM: As I talk to you now, we have an executive director (technical co-operation) from the UNWTO in Masvingo conducting a workshop on the TSA (Tourism Satellite Accounting).
If you recall, this is the third time since the beginning of the year that this TSA project is being pursued in earnest by the UNWTO. I hope that by the time we go to the general assembly we will have finished on the TSA model. So it’s happening.

DM: You keep on talking about the UNWTO General Assembly. How are the preparations shaping up? Will Zambia come up with its own chunk of the resources needed for this event? Exactly, how are you co-ordinating it?
WM: We are sharing the responsibilities 50-50 as co-hosts and responsibilities include financing of the event.
To demonstrate the seriousness of the two countries in hosting this event in their domain, the two presidents of the host countries — President Mugabe and President Michael

Sata — will append their signatures with a host country agreement, which will be witnessed by UNWTO secretary-general on May 28. He will be visiting the country from May 28 and May 30.

Any time between these dates there shall be an appending of signatures to the agreement. Just a week ago, (a fortnight ago) myself and my counterpart, the Zambian minister, signed the bilateral agreement on tourism co-operation as a precursor to the host country agreement.
And during the same period the two heads of state will also be signing the golden book on tourism, which is basically a recommitment by the two states to support tourism in their two countries.

DM: Are there any figures that are being bandied around as the budget for the whole exercise?
WM: We have individual offers from investors who want to fund nucleus projects in Victoria Falls for the UNWTO of up to $300 million.
The challenge is now on how we will securitise the parcels so that work can begin. We have received some very interesting and juicy offers for the UNWTO General Assembly.

But we will share with the nation these parcels at the appropriate time. Of course, we are running a little bit behind time, but we are dealing with people who are offering their own capital, so we have to make sense in the proposals that we are discussing with them.
We have to make sense of how we are going to pay back, we have to make sense about the viability of the projects and also about the sustainability of the entire product itself that we are trying to put in the Victoria Falls.

However, the minister’s dream is to create a tourism hub in the Victoria Falls. Government has set aside land for the development of a tourism theme park.
I am happy with the level of co-operation that we have received from all sister Government departments.
We also have back-up plans just in case we fail to complete some of these projects on time.

The UNWTO General Assembly comes to one country once in every 400 years so it cannot fail to plant legacy projects.
I am personally motivated by the desire to see His Excellency commission generational legacy projects that will remind us of his leadership in the last 32 years and beyond.
DM: Minister, as a country we have begun talking about elections and it’s most likely that they will be held this year. Are they not likely to impact on the tourism industry, or even hosting of the general assembly itself?

WM: Well, my business is packaging and I can tell you that it is our business as Zimbabweans to positively package our elections. Whilst they mean other things to other people, for us they mean an expression of democracy.
We are holding these elections with regularity whenever there are due. In fact, they are now overdue because the life and tenure of the inclusive Government was never meant to extend beyond two years.

The continued existence of the inclusive Government is now undemocratic because we now have an omnibus government where every part with electoral representation has a say.

However, it has grid-locked decision-making and we don’t seem to be making any traction.
The tragedy that we now have is how we can collapse a grand coalition.
So, if we package our elections there is absolutely nothing untoward about having an election this year.
Next year we wouldn’t want anything that interferes with a global endorsement of the country by the international community.

The discordant voice that you sometimes hear about when elections should be held is born out of the fact that some of us might be getting a bit too warm to this current arrangement. It’s like asking turkeys and chickens to vote for more Christmases.
We must understand that elections are part of governance and governance is a pillar in the matrix of branding.

DM: Minister, we want your honest assessment. What does the future hold in terms of the tourism sector in Zimbabwe?
WM: The future is very bright because fortunately the critical success factor to a successful tourism product is peace, stability and security, which we boast of in this country.
In the Southern African region, no one comes close to us. We have neighbours who have publicly acknowledged 58 criminally motivated murders per day. If we get one in a fortnight in Zimbabwe, it is headline news. If you want to speak about instability, look at North Africa, parts of the Middle East and Afghanistan. 
We don’t belong to any of the categories where those countries are captured. We are a peace haven.

We are noisy, yes, because of our literacy. Unfortunately, this is the area that we need to check as a country. We make so much noise to the point of self-destruction.
In addition, we are also privileged because of our natural endowments such as the best weather in the world, not by my own rating but by the global climate agency rating.
And people look for this, including one of the country’s first investors, Cecil John Rhodes. Even our natural habitats are also still very much intact. Between us and our neighbours we have some of the world’s biggest natural wildlife enclaves.