The Zambia Tourism Agency – ZTA has clarified that the 3 million tourist arrivals ‘target’ by 2024 announced by Tourism Minister Rodney Sikumba is an aspiration.
ZTA told the Zambian Business Times – ZBT after a request that a breakdown year by year from 2022 be shared on how Zambia plans to reach 3 million tourist arrivals by 2024. ZTA stated that “there is no specific breakdown on a year to year basis of the projected 3 million tourist arrivals in Zambia by end of 2024”.
Minister of Tourism Sikumba announced plans to increase tourist arrivals in Zambia to three (3) million in 2024 from the current peak of 1.2 million per annum. The Tourism ministry further stated that they will support events that promote tourist inflows in order to help achieve the target.
When contacted to give a breakdown of the target Minister of Tourism Rodney Sikumba directed the query to the Zambia Tourism Agency – ZTA who told ZBT that the 3 million was an aspiration.
The ZTA acting Chief Executive Officer Chavunga Lungu said the figures given by the Minister is a stretch mark. He added that the aspiration will be met after we get back to what the country had in the pre-covid 19 levels before 2019
Lungu said going by that projection, it would be good for the country to get into the 1.5 million tourist arrivals at the end of 2023 so that the number can be doubled by the end of 2024.
“We are working at that particular stretch which the minister did announce and we are putting in place strategies that will ensure that we get to that number which is the aspiration of the Tourism minister.” he said.
Lungu said among other measures being put in place, is to enhance the marketing strategies and ensure that the message reach out especially to countries known as key source markets. He said these are markets that generates the big numbers in terms of tourist arrivals that the country is looking for.
He said other strategies are recommendations from government through the minister of tourism that include the waiver of visa requirements and incentives being given to tourism sector so that there is a lot of investments in the sector to help realise the numbers.
“So yes it is a stretch and is something that can be definitely be realised so that is our initiative as the country to attract tourists”. When asked if it’s right for Zambia to waive visas for countries that are unwilling to reciprocate the gesture. Lungu stated that whether those countries decides to reciprocate or not, that is not our focus for now.
We are taking the initiative as a country and we have identified certain things that we need to do which are being put into the marketing strategies and Visa waiver is definitely one of those for Zambia to attract more tourists.” ZTA told ZBT.
The acting ZTA CEO however said it is not the government’s concern on whether the 17 countries with waived visas requirements [reciprocate], stating that they are sovereign states who make decisions on their own and choose who they decide to accept [via Visa waiver] in their country or not. “So I can only give information as far as what is it that we are trying to achieve as the country which is to attract [more] tourist.”
When asked to share how much revenue loss is expected from the waiver of visa to the 17 countries announced? Lungu stated that “I do not have the figures on what the country will lose out in terms of visa fees, but from a tourism point of view, the country will have potential to attract more foreign direct investments and forex.”
