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Lovemore Zigara  Business Correspondent
THE Midlands province has recorded more than 100 percent increase in hotel rooms in the last two years, according to the Hospitality Association of Zimbabwe (HAZ).The province now boasts of over 450 rooms as compared to about 200 in 2012.

HAZ chairperson for the Midlands chapter Tom Nyirenda said his organisation will take advantage of the increase in hotel accommodation and the availability of the giant Zanu-PF Convention Centre to market itself as the country’s hub for conferencing.

“We were even surprised by ourselves during the annual chiefs conference held in Gweru last year that we had the capacity to host conferences of such magnitude because there has been a tremendous increase in accommodation. There were some lodges, which we didn’t know about that offer good accommodation and excellent service,” he said.

“As a result we can now host conferences of up to 5,000 guests in the province because accommodation is now there. We would want to take advantage of the Zanu-PF Convention Centre, which can accommodate up to 5,000 people and market ourselves as a hub of conferencing in the country.”

Nyirenda, however, said there was a need to come up with minimum standards for some rooms in order to entice organisations to come for conferencing.

“As Midlands we’re trying to bring on board as many players to become HAZ members so that we can regulate the standards we’ve in each and every hotel or lodge in the province.

“That way we can attract big groups. We failed to bring the doctors’ conference because we had the challenge of standards where the doctors said some properties don’t match the standards they wanted,” he said.

“But if we come together as members then we can assist and advise each other on the standards. We can even come together and initiate customer care programmes where we train our staff so that people who are coming from outside can get the same hospitality they can anywhere.”

Nyirenda said improved road network has also increased the number of arrivals in the Midlands.

He said HAZ has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Zimtravel, a Zimpapers magazine publication to help promote tourism in the province.