Zimbabwe Tourism Situation

The history of Zimbabwe tourism is one of great prosperity in the last 20 years of the country's independence history to about year 2000. Zimbabwe has been one of the most visited countries in southern Africa through the 80s and 90s because of the leading tourist attractions such as Nyanga in the Eastern Highlands, the Victoria Falls and Great Zimbabwe Monument in Masvingo, central Zimbabwe.

The Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) is in charge of promoting tourism in Zimbabwe.

In fact tourism for a long time contributed a significant amount to national income that could be counted on. 1.4 million tourists visited Zimbabwe in 1999. This marked the end of peak numbers in visitors. A constant and terrible decline followed in late 2000 right through to 2009 with the start of Zimbabwe's problems as a result of the violent government sanctioned land inversions.

The Zimbabwe tourism sector shed thousands of staff due to the shrinking market. The pull-out of international airlines from Zimbabwe such as Austrian Airlines, KLM, Qantas and others further strained the tourism sector in terms of easy access to the Zimbabwean market as well as being a vote of no confidence in overall state of affairs in Zimbabwean. Zimbabwe's neighbours such as Botswana, South Africa and Zambia naturally heavily capitalised on this development. They began marketing zimbabwean resorts such as teh Victoria Falls under South African or Zambia packages. this generally gave an impression to many would be tourists that Victoria Falls or Kariba was not in Zimbabwe.

Some tourists continued to visit Zimbabwe especially those from other countries other than Britain and the United States. The government of Zimbabwe openly considered Britain and the US enemies of the "revolution". In response most western countries issued travel warnings on Zimbabwe also as a result of intensifying political violence against opponents of President Mugabe and his ZANU PF party.

In 2003 as a counter strategy to dwindling western investment and increasing isolation the government coined what they called the Look East Policy that sought to entice Asian investors deemed friendly to come to Zimbabwe. This also included tourists from Asia especially China. To further prop this strategy government through the tourism department invested time and money in teaching Chinese recipes in restaurants and hotels.

There was a trickle of Asian tourists in the following few years. However unlike western tourists, the spending patterns of Asian tourists are far less appreciated as compared to their western counterparts by tour operators. Further even the ordinary tourism resort workers felt a difference in terms of the usually free flow of service tips usually experienced when dealing with western tourists. Largely everybody was unhappy.

In the following years the ZTA had a new strategy of promoting Zimbabwe through facilitating and paying for concerts and visits by international celebrities such as reggage superstars and hip-hop artists amongst others. Most of the tourists left speaking positively about Zimbabwe. The real results are yet to be experienced. It remains to be seen if the followers of these artists who are naturally not tourists will finally gain the courage   and the resources to visit Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe tourism is not easy to fix. It is almost impossible to fix without any major political improvements. The world needs to agree that the Zimbabwe crisis is over if tourism is to completely rebound. It would appear even Asian tourists listen to the American and European travel warnings when making decisions to which countries to visit. The Lonely Planet website is for everyone!

Efforts by the Zimbabwe government to set-up international tourism booths promoting the country appear to have had little to absolutely no overwhelming success. Certainly today the Internet speaks louder than any government propaganda initiatives. Tourists first scan the Internet on a particular destination before ever considering to visit.

The developments in Zimbabwe in 2009 of an inclusive government born out of political negotiations have been reported to have had a positive impact o the overall tourism outlook. More needs to be done as the world is watching the continuing contradictionns and open disharmony within the government. Zimbabwe tourism has great potential only if the political situation is permanently resolved.

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