The Sunday Mail
THE Minister of Tourism and Hospitality Industry, Engineer Walter Mzembi, will in a week lead a UN debate of major global tourism stakeholders in Madrid, Spain, as part of efforts to debunk erroneous Western beliefs that regard Africa as a homogeneous state. This particularly in the face of the Ebola crisis.
Eng Mzembi is currently the chairperson of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) Commission for Africa (CAF), a post he landed in 2012 following Zimbabwe’s successful co-hosting of the UNWTO general assembly in August that same year.
Three West African countries – Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia – were the hardest hit by the Ebola outbreak last year.
The virus has so far killed more than 6 000 people.
Potential visitors from source markets have so far been shying away and withdrawing bookings for fear of contracting the disease.
For instance, while Southern Africa did not record any Ebola cases, its tourism suffered as scores of tourists from Asia cancelled their trips.
In South Africa, a total of 1 500 tourists from Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong, China and Japan who were to visit that country between August and October 2014 cancelled their trips, official statistics from South Africa reveal. Some of the tourists who managed to visit requested that game meat be removed from their menu.
By end of last week, officials from the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority and the Hospitality Association of Zimbabwe were still compiling statistics on how many tourist reservations were cancelled in Zimbabwe due to the Ebola scare.
Minister Mzembi said the meeting would deliberate on repairing the damage done to the industry and explaining to source markets to refrain from treating African countries as a single state.
Africa is made up of 54 countries, and as such disease outbreaks do not easily spread throughout the whole lot.
In this light, the meeting will see the drafting of mitigation strategies that will sell Africa as individual countries rather than one border-less entity.
“I will be leading the debate on the impacts of Ebola on the tourism economy.
“All countries in Africa have been treated as one and that has been problematic in international source markets.
“In some countries, being black alone is enough for one to be labelled a potential Ebola patient.
“We hope to have a blueprint with other agencies such as the International Civil Aviation Organisation,” Eng Muzembi said in an interview.
Nevertheless, he noted that even with the Ebola threat, there was strong tourist presence in major resort areas such as the Victoria Falls, whose bookings he claimed were “over-subscribed” during the festive season.
Figures on occupancies in major resort areas could, however, not be readily obtained last week.
But it is believed that city hotels and other smaller resorts were poorly subscribed due to pricing models that are considered to be beyond the reach of many.
Government opines that the local hospitality industry needs to address its prices if the sector is be competitive enough to attract both local and foreign tourists.
In other countries, the cost for a package that covers travel fares, hotel fares, meals and other activities would only cover a fraction of those activities in Zimbabwe, a situation which is deterrent to the growth of the tourism sector.
“Why would someone fly over the pyramids of Egypt to Zimbabwe where prices are higher?” queried Minister Mzembi.
Zimbabwe’s participation at the Vakantiebeurs, one of the most significant tourism consumer events in the world, will help improve arrivals from the Benelux countries, that is Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.
During its glory days in the 1990s, Zimbabwe would have as much as 38 800 arrivals from the Benelux, a figure that has since plunged to 14 000 a year.
