One of the world tourism hot spots, Zambia earned a million dollars in tourism levy year to date, the tourism ministry confirmed. Zambia collected the K10.93 million (circa. $1 million) in tourism levy – a marginal increase from K10.53 million in 2017.
However, this revenue number has been dubbed by analysts as sub optimal for a nation with immense potential given the vast tourism hot spots and assets it has.
The Southern African nation is on a recovery path to realize potential of its undervalued tourism potential through implementing accommodative policies. This includes using its cities like Livingstone host global corporate conferences and further hosting business expos in key provincial sites with rich historical spots such as Mbala and Kasama (in the Luapula and Northern Provinces respectively). Zambia will host the first ever southern province expo in June next year.
The copper producers largest set back in the tourism monetization journey has been lack of a national carrier which key airlines such as Kenyan Airways (KQ) and South African Airways (SAA) have taken advantage of. Zambia is set to relaunch a national airline in Q1:19, which will hopefully open direct routes into tourist hot spots. Zambia has for a long time been tagged a province of South Africa or Kenya which airlines have used as a ‘tag line’ to maximize ticket sales as they leverage on lack of an airline in Zambia. This has been seen in East African tourism packages with KQ flying into Livingstone twice a week, direct from Nairobi to ferry tourists after seeing the Kilimanjaro and Serengeti and SAA/Airlink that fly tourists directly from Johannesburg (JHB)/Mpumalanga (MPM) under 2 hours’ time space.
Critics have further lashed out at the ministry of tourism for failing to collaborate with the mines ministry to use discovery of landmark gems such as the recent ‘inkhalamu’ Lufwanyama emeralds to influence auction hosting locally. If this were possible then the country would arbitrage on attracting investors who would in essence be tourists after business dealings.
The Gemfields auction attracted 25 global company’s who wanted to buy the inkhalamu (5,625 carat – 1kilo emerald) and raised $28.5 million, whose opportunity cost was the loss forgone from the various investors who would have flown into Zambia to see our tourist attractions.
The Mbala centenary world war one celebrations was a successful event and the Zambia National Tourism Board – ZNTB are encouraged to take advantage of such events to maximize tourism levy collections. Hopefully, with the completion of the $850 million airport infrastructure opening doors to international destinations, Zambia could be on track to building a tourism industry like Kenya’s ($5 billion). In the meantime, Turkish Airline is set to make its debut flight into Lusaka this month.