By Jonathan Mbiriyamveka
The Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) Monday held a luncheon in Harare for the country’s top corporate executives in collaboration with the Marketers Association of Zimbabwe (MAZ) to engage on incentive travel.
The luncheon was part of ZTA’s drive to create awareness on Meetings Incentives Conventions and Exhibitions (MICE) tourism, a campaign targeting business tourism.
The objective of the event was to educate corporate executives on the incentive travel strategy which entails rewarding and recognizing excellent performance and loyalty of employees thereby benefiting the employer through improved productivity.
ZTA’s Chief Executive Ms. Winnie Muchanyuka gave an oration on the organisation’s drive to entice corporates to embrace the concept of ‘incentivizing’ or ‘motivating’ their employees or partners through adopting travel as an incentive. Ms Muchanyuka also reiterated on how Incentive travel is a critical subset of the MICE industry.
Businessman & Victoria Falls Destination Management Company Owner, Mr. Kumbi Chiweshe also gave a talk on Incentive travel while MAZ Vice President, Mrs. Emiliah Mabika applauded the ZTA for this move of engaging with corporates directly.
According to ZTA, MICE tourism strategy is one of the remedies that has potential to turnaround the country’s tourism sector.
The MICE industry is regarded as a key feature in tourism recovery, it thrives globally as it gives access to international events that can be attracted into the destination, translating into international arrivals.
Alongside with the tourism sector, the MICE industry was hard hit by the tight global lockdown measures, which restricted local and international travel as governments sought to control the spread of the deadly Covid-19 pandemic.
As the country works on strategies to foster a strong recovery from Covid-19, the MICE industry is said to play a critical role in rejuvenating economic activity in the country.
As a country, MICE tourism has been identified as one of the quick wins or remedies in our recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic because it is easier to sway business events than it is to influence leisure travel.
The launch of the Meet In Zimbabwe campaign last year, which is the MICE campaign, has gone beyond the borders as ZTA has been participating at specialised MICE shows around the world including IMEX Frankfurt 2022 in Germany.
The focus now was on encouraging Zimbabweans to bid for conferences, attract meetings and events, while at ZTA they would provide technical assistance to the associations and companies that would submit the bids to create winning bids.
Coupled with that, the ZTA was also creating capacity in the MICE industry because it is a big industry which had not been focused on for some time.
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