Buyers attending the Sanganai-Hlanganani world travel fair said the country had huge potential to grow the tourism industry through enhancing and improving the hotel and airline services in the country.
A group of buyers led by, China United Fun Trip International Agency (CUT) sales manager, Zhang Liming, said their visit to the country was representative of the numerous potential customers eager to visit the country.
“Expanding the airline services is the most important tool to promote and grow tourism in the country,” said Liming.
“Zimbabwe should introduce more players in the airline services as there is a need to expand and grow the tourism industry.”
Liming said at the moment there was only one flight a week to China and this was limiting the number of tourists visiting Zimbabwe. “Once-a-week flight is not enough. If we have daily flights to and from China this will increase the visits of people to Zimbabwe from different countries,” said Liming.
He said Zimbabwe was blessed with many wonderful tourist attractions that were yet to be explored by the international market.
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“We are impressed with the hotels, services, security and the beautiful weather in Zimbabwe, but there is room for improvement in all these areas,” said Liming.
He said hotel facilities in Zimbabwe were good, but there was room for expansion in area of providing services in other languages apart from English for ease of understanding and communication.
“Zimbabwe has wonderful and warm people surrounded with a good climate, but it will be nicer if we have people speaking Chinese and offering more Chinese food as well,” said Liming.
ZTA marketing executive in China, Monica Liu, said China spends about $7 000 dollars per person through shopping per visit.
Liu said Zimbabwe should introduce duty-free facilities for tourist shopping to allow huge investment in the country.
China wants to invest through buying and with huge duties being charged this was limiting many tourists from spending, leaving much of the money for duty,” said Liu.