Government comes up with measures to promote tourism in Midlands

GOVERNMENT has come up with measures to promote tourism growth in the Midlands Province, which has several leisure resort attractions that are little known.

The interventions are set to boost the province’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in line with the devolution mantra and the broader National Development Strategy (NDS1) and Vision 2030.

Part of the cocktail of measures include but not limited to the establishment of an airport in Gweru, the sprucing up of existing tourism sites like the Sebakwe conservancy in Kwekwe as well as the marketing of some little-known tourism sites like the magical Gandavaroyi Gorge in Gokwe.

Gandavaroyi Gorge in Gokwe
Gandavaroyi Falls is situated in Gokwe, Nembudziya in the Gumunyu area. There is also the Zimbabwe Military Museum — under the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe (NMMZ) in city of Gweru. The military museum serves as the country’s National Army and Aviation Museum.

Midlands is also home to Boterekwa escarpment in Shurugwi, among other places of attraction.
This was revealed by the Minister of Environment, Climate and Tourism Industry, Mangaliso Ndlovu, who was in Kwekwe and Gweru last week and met different tourism executives.

Addressing a tourism indaba in Gweru last Thursday after visiting some of the tourism sites, Minister Ndlovu said the province is endowed with serene views, which require a robust marketing strategy.

“Through this noteworthy collaboration, we will continue to take an intensive audit of all potential tourism sites in this province, so that we can come up with development plans for them to attract investments and promote these sites to both domestic and international tourists alongside the popular tourism products in the country,” he said.

“The Government has come up with a cocktail of measures to promote tourism in the Midlands Province.

This is a development meant to boost the province’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).” Gross Domestic Product Minister Ndlovu said there were a lot of tourism attractions in the Midlands province, which need to be taped into for the province to have a source of income to contribute to the GDP.

“Tourism sector can contribute to the socio-economic growth of the province. It can contribute to the GDP of the province and the nation at large,” he said.

Minister Ndlovu said he has been touring the tourism attractions across the country and is impressed at the potential of revenue the country can get if all the attractions are tapped into.
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Sebakwe in Kwekwe
“I have discovered that each province has its own unique selling points, which can be leveraged to collate Destination Zimbabwe packages,” he said.

“Such cross-cutting packages will be the stimulus for tourists to stay longer in our country, thereby increasing the length of stay and revenue for the country.” Some of the tourism stakeholders, who graced the Indaba, took the opportunity to plead with Government to remove bottlenecks affecting the industry for it to realise its full potential.

Government is in the process of taking stock of the country’s tourism potential with a view to come up with a holistic approach in marketing Destination Zimbabwe through the Hash tag ‘ZimBho’ campaign.-The Chronicle