Zimbabwe is in the process of creating a virtual city which the Minister of Tourism and Hospitality, Prisca Mupfumira called “our own Disney land” on a press conference yesterday.
The virtual city, which will see Hwange, Victoria Falls, Kariba and parts of Binga being turned into a tourism hub is one of the Special Economic Zones (SEZ) that will be established in Zimbabwe.
“The Special Economic Zone will come with benefits in the areas of taxation and special concessions” Mupfumira is on the record saying.
“We invite investors to take advantage of this opportunity while it still lasts. It’s a first-come-first-served or winner takes all.”
The Minister also said that the Tourism Ministry has adopted a two-fold strategy of growth and recovery in the press conference.
“In terms of recovery we need to recover our volumes of arrivals from our traditional source markets wherein we used to have a high market share of foreign versus local visitor ship of as 305 of our travellers being foreign which had now fallen to below 20% over the years,” Mupfumira said.
“We therefor have embarked on an aggressive campaign to re-engage our source markets, particularly the tour operators who had stopped packaging Zimbabwe.”
Tourists arrivals in Zimbabwe were at 2,422,930 in 2017 a 12% increase from the 2,167,686 in 2016.
Zimbabwe is endowed with a lot of natural resources and potential sites of rich culture and heritage according to the Tourism Minister.
“These products, if strategically developed, competitively packaged and aggressively marketed will increase the length of stay, product portfolio and encourage geographical spread of tourism within the country,” Mupfumira said.
