Recently updated on September 8th, 2023 at 08:43 pm
The Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) (“the implementing agent” of the Ministry of Environment, Climate, Tourism and Hospitality Industry) with support from Agence Française de Développement (“AFD”), is undertaking a Comprehensive Post Covid-19 Tourism Assessment and Strategy Implementation.
The assessment is part of the implementation of the National Tourism Recovery and Growth Strategy that was launched by Government in 2020. The tourism sector is arguably the hardest hit sector by COVID-19 pandemic resulting from the pandemic induced travel bans and restrictions which were instituted across the whole world to curb the spread of COVID-19.
Albeit the critical importance of these measures, they led to substantial losses in investment, business, revenue, employment, livelihoods of communities and local economic development worldwide and Zimbabwe was no exception.
In view of the above, this project’s main thrust is to support and accelerate recovery while building resilience across various tourism segments, levels of development and demographics. Other areas of strategic imperative of the assessment are the impact of COVID-19 on tourism losses in areas of investment, arrivals, revenues, employment, image, growth and more.
The assessment will be carried out across the country focusing on building back big, small, medium enterprises and community-based tourism projects.
In order to obtain relevant and appropriate data that will inform decision making, the ZTA through BDO Advisory Services and Africa Tourism Partners will be conducting an industry-wide online survey with effect from May 2022. All stakeholders and partners are therefore kindly requested to participate through completing Covid-19 impact questionnaire to be shared in due course.
Further to this, ZTA takes this opportunity to invite the industry to attend one of the four regional workshops scheduled between 6 and 17 June 2022 in Chinhoyi, Masvingo, Bulawayo and Victoria Falls.
Some of the expected outputs at the end of the assessment include the following:
- The level of COVID-19 impacts to tourism investment, revenue, employment, etc
- Community Based Tourism Enterprises Map
- Tourism Investment Mapping
- New Tourism Development Zones
- Tourism Investment Strategy
- Domestic Tourism Strategy
- MICE Strategy
- Destination Marketing Strategy
A journey to Zimbabwe will take you through an attractive patchwork of landscapes, from highveld, balancing boulders and flaming msasa trees, to laidback towns, lush mountains and lifeblood rivers. Here you can spot the Big Five (leopard, lion, rhino, elephant and buffalo) in its national parks, discover World Heritage–listed archaeological sites and stand in awe of one of the natural wonders of the world, Victoria Falls.
Throughout its past two decades of governmental mismanagement, political violence and economic disaster, Zimbabwe continued to welcome visitors with the same grace and politeness that they were famed for. And as a result those who did travel here usually left insisting that that the country was hands down one of the safest, friendliest and most spectacular countries on the continent.
In 2017 the post-Mugabe dawn that millions of Zimbabweans longed for finally arrived, and their excitement of what the future may hold is still palpable to all who visit.
