IT is not surprising that Zambia was recently voted second best tourist destination to visit in 2016 for the French, with that status, we need to enhance the sector.
This accolade was confirmed by Zambia’s Ambassador to France Humphrey Chibanda who received the results from Liligo.com which organised the competition.
Liligo.com is an online travel search engine currently present in 13 countries. It is also the leader of flight search engines in France with two million searches per month.
With so many countries present and two million searches on that online engine, we cannot doubt the authenticity of the results.
This recognition begun when Liligo.com France, approached the Zambian Mission in Paris and presented a proposal for Zambia to participate in a competition for the best tourist destination to visit in 2016 for the French.
The Mission took up the challenge and presented the proposal to the Zambia Tourism Board who gave a go ahead to enter the competition.
The competition involved sending three well qualified French travel bloggers to three different countries for 14 days and Zambia was drawn together with Canada and Oman.
The itinerary for the Zambian blogger included South Luangwa National Park, Lower Zambezi, Kafue National, Lusaka and Livingstone, under the facilitation of the Zambia Tourism Board working in collaboration with the local Zambian tour operators who offered various services to the blogger.
Giving feedback at the Zambian Mission in Paris, Fabrice Dubesset the travel blogger who had travelled to Zambia said the country was a must-see tourist destination for those seeking authentic unexplored destinations.
In the words of Mr Fabrice’s report, Zambia is a must visit destination, visiting some places is like watching a documentary on National Geographical channel.
There are various ways in which Zambia can grow the tourism sector, one being air transport which can also play an important role in the country’s economic development.
This is because the connectivity provided by air transport facilitates the fast-growing tourism industry both at local and international levels.
We say so because it is estimated that over half of international tourists travel to their destinations by air.
Air transportation further plays a vital role in the country’s growth process of accelerating convergence of goods and the travelling public like tourists.
Examples abound, that the contribution of air transport to the economy far exceeds that of the road transport sector in the country.
It is also true that tourism is particularly important in many developing countries like Zambia where this sector is a key part of economic development strategies.
This can be confirmed by looking at statistics showing that Zambia received nearly 950,000 international tourists in 2014 representing an increase of 3.4 per cent for the period.
Further, Government statistics projects optimism that the envisaged one million international tourist arrivals target will soon be achieved.
We are also encouraged by the fact that Ministry of Tourism and Arts, Permanent Secretary Stephen Mwansa announced that Zambia received a total of 946,969 in 2014 compared to 914,576 in 2013.
We can take advantage of the fact that from that total number of visitors in 2014, 23 per cent came from Europe, America and Asia while 77 per cent were from within Africa.
This potential has been recognised by the Government and as such in the Industrialisation and Job Creation Strategy of 2013, tourism has been picked as a priority sector, with the target to create 300,000 jobs by 2016, representing a significant growth from the current tally of 57,337 jobs in the tourism sector counted in 2013.
Formation of the national flag carrier, therefore, is expected to boost the Zambian tourism sector because tourists will find it easier to directly fly to Zambia.
Minister of Tourism and Arts Jean Kapata, agrees that the re-establishment of the new airline will complement easy access to various tourism destinations.
It will make tourists easily access the tourism resorts that Zambia is endowed with, such as the national parks, heritage sites, water bodies and the legendary Victoria Falls.
Ms Kapata assures that the Zambian Government considers tourism as a major economic sector that can create wealth and jobs if well managed.
It is in that vein and with the imminent commencement of the Zambia Airways 2014 Limited, we feel the country’s tourism sector is expected to move to greater heights.