Pulll up your socks: Zambia tourism board urged

BCL Import and Export director Clement Muyasani has urged the Zambia National Tourist Board (ZNTB) to improve their sensitization programme or risk losing foreign exchange. Mr Muyasani said in an interview that ZNTB should do more to attract both local and foreign tourists because the current marketing strategies were not effective. He said Zambians were opting to go out of the country instead of having the holiday locally which could in turn promote the local tourists resorts. Mr Muyasani said with the new brand identity and slogan ‘Zambia: Let’s Explore’ it was high time ZNTB lured more tourists and record an influx of sightseers from South Africa and other parts of the globe.

The re-branding of ZNTB, from a tourist perspective should generate enough resources for the country and contribute positively to Gross Domestic Products (GDP) He said recently ZNTB had been conducting sensitization meetings in towns across the country for people to have the information of who offered affordable accommodation and lower viewing rates. Mr Muyasani said if Zambia had known that such things were affordable many would opt to go on holiday either in Mfuwe, Livingstone or any tourist resort. He said more Zambians were opting to go for the holiday out of the country because accommodation and pleasure resorts were not affordable in the country. From his observation South African tourists resorts had high influx of the local tourists. Recently on the flight to South Africa for a festival holiday in George the Western Cape he discovered that his family was the only one from Zambia. He said even at Placid Water hotel where he was lodging his family was the only one from Zambia the rest were South Africans promoting their tourism industry. Mr Muyasani said for the past four year he had been having holidays outside the country he saw no reason of going out of the country if accommodation was affordable in the country. He said the only tourist attraction at George was the ocean and the lagoon but Zambia had far better tourists’ attractions. But while at Southern Sun hotel he only paid about K1.2 million for accommodation and all the meals of the day. He said the only different in South Africa was that the road networks leading to tourist resorts were in tip top condition. He appealed to both Government and ZNTB to improve the road network leading to such facilities.

Mr Muyasani said another plus for the South African tourism authority was that it had encouraged more people to be offering car hire services. He said in South Africa it was almost impossible to book a taxi and only option was to hire a vehicle. He appealed to ZNTB to encourage more people to invest in car and make the rates affordable to the would-be tourists as one way of luring more tourists to Zambia.