By Jonathan Mbiriyamveka
Tourism sector has suffered a lot of brain and skills drain in post-Covid-19 era impacting on destination Zimbabwe.
This was observed by Zimbabwe Tourism Authority and Hospitality Association of Zimbabwe in Harare at a meeting held recently.
In separate interviews on the programme Tourism Updates by Godfrey Chief Koti, the two organisations made a commitment to intensify destination marketing initiatives to close the skills gap that has been caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
ZTA acting chief executive Mr Givemore Chidzidzi said the industry was hard hit by brain and skills drain.
“We both realised or agreed that the tourism sector has suffered a lot of brain dram or skills drain especially given the Covid-19 pandemic that we have gone through and business was low.
“And this time around it was not the flight of skills to other territories or other operators but to other sectors completely because we’ve had people now who moved from hospitality sector to other sectors and then also as other parts of the world are starting to opening up faster than ourselves, we have also found our people going to other destinations where they are serving and as such we find ourselves with some skills gaps which we agreed we need to close as quickly as possible,” Mr Chidzidzi said.
Areas of cooperation are plenty as far as the two organization are concerned with
HAZ president Farai Chimba concurring saying decentralizing of activities not only as the industry but also ZTA in line with NDS1 could assist in closing gaps
“We did cover the aspects of marketing which are very key to buttress the ZimBho campaign that is currently happening and how we as operators can come on board and give packages that are attractive to the domestic market but also looking at the aspect of international marketing.
“What we can participate in in terms of international trade shows and be part and parcel of growing the tourism economy as well,” Chimba said.
The meeting was part of the National Tourism Organisation’s rigorous efforts to continue solidifying relations with the tourism industry and foster collaboration with the industry.
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