Newly appointed Minister of Tourism and Hospitality Industry, Prisca Mupfumira has expressed disappointment at the standards of local hotels in the country saying Zimbabwe is deemed an expensive destination despite the standards having gone down.
Officiating at the Hospitality Association of Zimbabwe (HAZ) 2017 Annual Congress, Mupfumira said the standards of hotels in the country needs to be improved to enable the country to attract more visitors.
“Some of these hotels that have so many stars do not deserve them, standards have dropped and they are not the same anymore,
“We deemed to be the most expensive tourist destination and the hotels are expensive too but it does not match the standards of hotels,
“All those hotels have to be refurbished and support is needed for the initiative to pull through,” said Mupfumira.
She called on the general management of hotels to be up to scratch for ideal services.
“General management should also improve and be up to scratch to deliver five star services. Tourism is about marketing and branding Zimbabwe and those in front should look the part,” she added.
Chief Executive Officer of Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA), Karikoga Kaseke emphasized on being local hotels to go digital as a way of attracting more visitors.
“Our digital marketing strategy is to transform the authority into a digitally capable organisation by December 2019, to achieve 200 million impressions on all online platforms by December 2019 and to achieve 1 000 000 followers on all our platforms by the same time next year,
“We also aim to convert 30% of traffic from online platforms into sales and bookings by December 2019 and to attain first page ranking on leading search engines by December 2019,” said Kaseke.
According to Kaseke, travel is now online with 63% of all travels now researched, booked, bought and sold online while 50% of online travel sales involve more than one device and 300 reviews per minute are posted on TripAdvisor.
