By AUSTIN KARONGA
THE Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) says it is eyeing expansion of the country’s source markets by charting new frontiers as part of efforts to achieve a US$5 billion tourism sector by 2025.
Over and above the traditional source markets, that include the United Kingdom, the United State, Germany and Belarus, among others, the local authority has now turned focus on arrivals from lucrative destinations such as Dubai, China, South Korea and India.
ZTA spokesperson Godfrey Koti, pictured, yesterday told the Daily News that while Covid-19 period had given rise to local tourism, they need to complement it by tapping more from the international source markets.
“We have focused on domestic tourism for a while now since 2020 with our ZimBho campaign, which is part of a tourism recovery and growth strategy that we launched in the same year.
“This was obviously a reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic, but more so a continuation of our programmes that we had put in place where we said we wanted to bring a US$5 billion tourism economy by 2025 and we believe that we are probably still on course with this,” Koti said.
“So, we focused on domestic tourism for a while and it so happened that there were restrictions for international travel and as a result our local tourists also responded so well to that campaign, the ZimBho campaign.
“Now, we are adding something to it. We have what we call the Meet in Zim campaign, which is predominantly a business tourism drive, what we call meetings in incentive travel, conferences and exhibitions.”
Koti said the country had been so visible at events that took place in the Middle East, particularly in Dubai which is proving to be a good market for Zimbabwe tourism.
“We have been focusing on that as well, trying to get as many conferences going on in the country, meetings and exhibitions as well.
“This has also been going on quite well. To wrap it all up, we have an international tourists campaign which we have coined the Visit Zimbabwe campaign.
“This is something that encompasses all these sub-campaigns that we are running. As a result, we have been doing quite well with it.
“The idea there is to create as many packages as possible for our international audience.
“We have been going on to our traditional source markets. We have been chanting new frontiers.
“You will recall that we were in Dubai quite a lot this year, that’s a new frontier, more or less a green field market, that we are trying to massage to grow rapidly.
“We have also turned our attention to the Chinese market. We are looking at South Korea, as well as a market we are focusing on India as well.” – Daily News