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Leonard Ncube, Victoria Falls Reporter

THE Tourism Business Council (TBC) says the recent relaxation of travel restrictions and re-opening of land borders will enhance tourism traffic from self-drives and resultantly save thousands of jobs in the sector.

The sentiments come after the Government on Tuesday announced that all land borders have been re-opened for vaccinated tourists.

In an interview TBC president, Mr Wengayi Nhau, said opening of borders had leveled the playing field in terms of accessibility and benefits from the much-needed tourism dollar.

Recently tourism traffic was mainly confined to Harare, Bulawayo and Victoria Falls where few airlines have been flying to.

“The opening of land borders is a welcome move from a tourism and trade perspective. We have tourism traffic from Far East countries that prefer flying in and out but we have other source markets particularly Europe and America, which is our biggest market, who have longer holiday times and tend to travel to different countries in the region to explore the different attractions hence prefer self-drives,” he said.

“Self-drives are a major source of tourism traffic in terms of access to areas that are not serviced by air transport. People travel as families and as groups by road and with borders closed, it meant there was no option for such people to cross into inland areas,” said Mr Nhau.

He said a majority of tourists especially into Victoria Falls fly directly or via South Africa and hire cars to traverse the region.

Mr Nhau said with borders closed, recovery was happening very well but it was confined and biased towards areas that would have been ordinarily accessible by air especially Harare while other tourism destinations in the country suffered.

He said Victoria Falls was recovering well before the 10-day mandatory quarantine in December and desperately needed borders to be opened to benefit from self-drives around the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier area.

“Recovery was confined to Harare, and Victoria Falls at the expense of the rest of the resorts around the country. Going forward it is our view that the tourism industry is set to recover much faster than a lot of people anticipated,” said Mr Nhau.

“We are looking at the demand to travel from the source market and we expect the second half of this year to see an improvement in terms of traffic given we don’t get other pronouncements of lockdowns and restrictions. We expect quick recovery, which will lead to more jobs being opened.”

About 70 percent of workers lost their jobs in the tourism sector in the last two years due to Covid-19-induced global travel restrictions.

Hospitality Association of Zimbabwe (HAZ) national chair Mr Farai Chimba said the sector was poised for exciting developments and thanked the Government for its consideration of the industry.

“These are exciting developments indeed and for the hospitality sector we have received timely shots in the arm through the 100 percent retention, which can only be effective if we are receiving tourists,” he said.

“That has been addressed by removing mandatory quarantine requirements on vaccinated travelers along with re-opening of borders after over two years of closure.

“We applaud the Government for the containment of the fourth wave despite the pain we have had to endure as a sector and tourism at large.

“We can now plan in advance as operators while seeing light at the end of the tunnel in restoring business and livelihoods that had been affected.

“There is now a need to actively lobby and put Zimbabwe on the global stage with hosting of key meetings and events through the recent admission to the Global Association of the Exhibition Industry (UFI) because as a destination hosting meetings and events will see optimization of our products.” – @ncubeleon