The Sunday News
Roberta Katunga, Senior Business Reporter
A 17-member Chinese delegation of tour operators arrived in the country yesterday for a four-day educational tour aimed at showcasing Zimbabwe’s tourism products and increasing destination awareness.
The delegation is being hosted by the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority as well as the South African Tourism (SAT) and Ethiopian Airlines is scheduled to tour Victoria Falls and surrounding tourist facilities.
ZTA chief executive Karikoga Kaseke said the educational tour was as a result of recommendations by Chinese tour operators at last year’s edition of the China International Travel Mart (CITM).
He said the familiarisation tour comes as a strategy to meet the ever-changing needs of the dynamic tourism trends across the world, but especially in the Chinese Travel Trends.
“During the last edition of the CITM travel show, it was deemed necessary to take a regional approach in courting this market as Chinese tourists prefer to visit more than one country on long haul trips, hence the joint marketing initiative with South Africa.
“As a sector these are some of the strategic joint marketing efforts we are investing in with various partners and stakeholders in order to further increase our brand visibility across all source markets,” said Mr Kaseke.
Mr Kaseke said the familiarisation tour and the newly announced relaxed visa requirements for Chinese nationals visiting Zimbabwe are part of efforts aimed at increasing tourist traffic from the Chinese market which has become the largest outbound tourist source market by both arrivals and revenue.
The familiarisation tour began with the South African leg on 29 February 2016.
