Zimbabwe should adopt holistic marketing approach — ZTA

ZIMBABWE needs a holistic marketing approach that can give customer experience to visitors and investors and brand the nation as a destination of choice, a senior tourism executive has said.

Speaking at the 14th Marketers Association of Zimbabwe (MAZ) annual convention in Victoria Falls recently, Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) chief executive, Ms Winnie

Muchanyuka, said tourists and investors’ needs had changed post Covid-19 hence the need to enhance the Zimbabwean brand and be competitive.

“The differentiator that will make a tourist stay longer is customer experience. They (tourists) can view the Big 5 in Zimbabwe, Zambia or Botswana but whoever is going to give the experience that the tourist is looking for is where the tourists will spend more time and money,” she said.

“We need to enhance our brand and become competitive. Good experiences will produce good business and customer experience impacts on value proposition,” she said.

Ms Muchanyuka implored marketers to be led by customer insights and to put faith in digital transformation for it is the way in which the world is going.

She said tourism has become difficult because post-Covid the taste of travellers has become different.

The answer to the challenges is having brand confidence and value performance which ensures a return in investment, she noted.

“We should know our customer and understand customer trends. The post-Covid forum has become different, you need to know what’s happening in the world.

“You can’t even know your traditional market so we need to invest in broad and thorough research and data collection to have updated information about the brand and product for the customer.

“Customer experience is about knowing the needs and knowledge about the touch points and so we need to offer the right service and the service or product needs to have consistency.

“We need to endeavour that the experience becomes fundamental,” said Ms Muchanyuka.

Ms Muchanyuka said it is very important that for tourism players to understand the needs of customers so that players change or redefine trends.

“So you need to know the trends, what is happening in the world. Customers expect us to know what they are looking for and that we can deliver,” she said.

The MAZ conference was held under the theme: “The future is now-marketing, PR and communications winning through sustainability and innovation.”

The association’s president, Ms Lillian Mbayiwa, said MAZ has experienced significant growth and success over the past year thanks to the dedication and hard work of team members.

She said client base had improved while some innovative programmes such as Marketers Association Zimbabwe Business Institute have been launched, with a board also appointed.

The training institute is an arm of MAZ that is responsible for undertaking training and career development activities for marketers, sales professionals, customer experience managers and other business related professionals.

Running under three institutes — the Digital Marketing Institute, the Customer Experience Institute and the Sales Institute — the programmes have been chained together to foster career development, said Ms Mbayiwa.-chronicle