Menace to society

Nyanga – The weather is unfriendly – well below zero – but Thembie Mulanga, the lady at the front office of the four-star hotel in Nyanga, about 80km north-east of Mutare, beams warmly as she welcomes a group of over 50 visitors to this picturesque resort area.

For Thembie, having such a large group of visitors is an exciting experience, one she had missed over seven years due to an economic and political crisis that has blighted the fortunes of the country's tourism sector.

For the first time in a long time, the hotel bursts into life, reminding Thembie and fellow employees of the good old days when Nyanga was a destination of choice for foreign visitors eager to catch a glimpse of the beauty of Zimbabwe's resorts.

It also marked a revival of the sector, they imagined, and rightly so.

Tourism industry players had embarked on rigorous international campaigns to regain lost confidence among foreign visitors who had grown increasingly averse to visiting Zimbabwe due to reports of violence, torture and lawlessness in the international press.

The government, feeling the pinch from dwindling foreign currency inflows as a result of reduced international tourist arrivals, had assisted in the campaigns, splurging billions of dollars in marketing campaigns mainly targeted at Asian markets.

Foreign currency earnings from the tourism industry have slumped from US$777 million in 1997 to less than US$100 million in 2005.

Ruined

But a new wave of violence and state-sanctioned brutality against members of the opposition, lawyers, human rights activists and journalists has once again ruined prospects of revival in the tourism industry.

The United States government last month issued a fresh travel warning to its citizens, indicating that Zimbabwe was no longer a safe travel destination and urging Americans to shun the country.

“The security forces increasingly are acting with impunity. The government publicly has defended its right to treat individuals roughly including those in custody and has warned of more such abuses,” the US, whose president labelled Zimbabwe an outpost of tyranny, said in a statement.

With a presidential election scheduled for next year, analysts warn that the country could experience an escalation of political violence. Industry players said this could mark a new season of renewed travel warnings by the West, something likely to hurt the fortunes of an industry already teetering on the brink of collapse.

“It is very disappointing and it worries us that there is a renewed onslaught (from) our traditional markets,” said Chipo Mtasa, president of the Zimbabwe Council of Tourism (ZCT). “Although we are looking at other markets, we still consider traditional markets to be important to us,” she said.

Crisis, what crisis?

But Shingi Munyeza, the industrious ZTA chairman and chief executive officer of the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange-listed hotel and leisure group, Zimsun Leisure, discounted the impact of the travel alerts.

“It (travel warnings) will affect those (tour operators) sitting on the fence. But I have spoken to many tour operators who have indicated that they are not affected. So the travel warning doesn't affect what we are doing at the moment. It's more on political issues,” Munyeza said.

However, Tony Hawkins, a lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe's Graduate School of Management, said the situation was likely to make it difficult to attract visitors from new markets.

“They (travel warnings) make it difficult to take new ones,” Hawkins said.

Although the government launched a “Look East” policy more than three years ago under which it injected huge funds for a marketing campaign in the Asian countries, particularly China, nothing significant has been achieved from the campaign.

Recently, a Chinese pop star, Chris Wong, shot down claims by government authorities and players in the tourism sector that the country's tourist destinations were now popular in China.

Wong, who was in the country for the Harare International Festival of the Arts, said the state-run Zimbabwe Tourism Authority still had a lot of work to do in marketing the country's destinations.

Article courtesy of the The Financial Gazette