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Michelle Moyo, [email protected]

THE Ministry of Tourism and Hospitality Industry is working on rolling out an elaborate plan to boost domestic tourism by having locals sample the various tourism products dotted around the country which will include distributing promotional materials through local authorities.

The ministry has in the recent past launched various campaigns to encourage locals to participate in domestic tourism.

For instance, during the 2023/24 festive season, the #Ungaphi, #Uripi campaign was launched countrywide under the theme: “Every journey leads you home.”

The campaign ran from November 6 to January 15 and was aimed at encouraging locals to travel to the country’s tourists destinations this festive season.

THE Zimbabwe Tourism Authority

It was designed to focus mainly on the domestic market, whose contribution to economic growth and development is yet to be fully realised.

Speaking in the Senate recently, Tourism minister, Barbara Rwodzi told senators that the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA), its mandate is to promote and market every tourism destination, activities and facilities available in the country.

 “How it then gets to everybody is the question. For those who do not have access to televisions or radio and other digital platforms, we are printing information that has to go. 

“Sometimes it will be good to give it to Members of Parliament to distribute into their constituencies or to give other institutions like local Government, Rural District Councils and also to the City Councils to share and disseminate written information, particularly in our own language which is Shona, Ndebele and Tonga or other languages, so that everybody can read, to those who can read,” said the minister.

Minister Rwodzi added that to cater for people who cannot read, there will be a need to make use of provincial officers.

“At the moment, we are talking to the Local Government Minister that we have a workshop ,we are planning to have district officers that can go in every corner of the country within the districts to have workshops.

USD: Image taken from Shutterstock

“I am sure you have seen us going around with campaigns to awaken everyone in the country, in every corner that we are here and what can be found where they stay because on the other side, the communities or the society does not realise that they have tourism destinations in their places.

“So it is about what they have as a product and where they can go to enjoy themselves within their settings if they cannot drive or if they cannot afford to go outside their places. So that is going to be accessed through the workshops that we are going to engage with RDCs and City Councils,” she said. Tourism is one of the key pillars with which the Government seeks accelerated economic growth towards the upper middle-income economy by 2030 as espoused by President Mnangagwa.

Under the National Tourism Recovery and Growth Strategy — the blueprint with which the Government expects to drive tourism sector growth, the Government is targeting sector growth to attain US$5 billion by 2025. — @Lo7246Lovelyn.