Zim’s tourism receipts reached $1,2bln in 2019

14 Jul, 2020 - 00:07 0 Views
Zim’s tourism receipts reached $1,2bln in 2019

eBusiness Weekly

Business Writer
Zimbabwe received a total of US$1,25 billion in tourism receipts in 2019, with foreign receipts contributing US$868 million, according to the 2019 Budget and Economic Review Report released by Treasury on Friday.

The main source of these receipts was accommodation facilities and the food subsector.

The 2019 revenue is a 10 percent drop from US$1,39 billion in tourism receipts generated in 2018.

This fall is largely as a result of the drop in tourist arrivals by 11 percent to 2 294 259 from 2 579 974 recorded in 2018, reads part of the Report using statistics from the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) 2019 Annual Report.

Despite the drop in arrivals, Africa remains the biggest source market for Zimbabwe’s foreign tourists contributing about 82 percent of the total arrivals with South Africa, Malawi and Zambia contributing a combined 75 percent of total arrivals from this regional source market.

“However, the purpose of visit is largely visiting friends and relatives (VFR), where direct tourism receipts are minimal.”

The other overseas source markets were largely dominated by leisure and business tourists, who ordinarily have a higher average spend per visit, although their share to total arrivals remains subdued.

Meanwhile, consequent to the general depressed performance of the tourism industry, national

average hotel room occupancy rates for all regions declined to 44 percent from 53 percent in 2019.

The major regions, with the largest share in hotel bed and room occupancies, which are Victoria Falls, Harare and Bulawayo all registered declines in occupancy rates during the period under review.

Similarly, national average hotel bed occupancy rates declined by 7 percentage points from 39 percent in 2018.

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