'Technologies help enhance Zimbabwe tourism drive'

By Staff reporter | 30 Apr 2019 at 21:41hrs
Tech
ZIMBABWE can further enhance its travel experience through the use of emerging technologies, stakeholders at the on-going Arabian Travel Market have said.

The country, through the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority, is showcasing its growing portfolio of hospital offerings at the Arabian Travel Market, hoping to build on a record tourism year in which it received 2,5 million visitors. This comes as tourism entities around the world continue to rapidly transform their operations and destination offerings in line with the ever-evolving needs of today's travellers.

"The theme of the 26th edition highlights the role that technology and innovation is playing in revolutionising the travel landscape," Dubai Tourism director general Helal Saeed Almarri said.

"Dubai has already embraced a 'digital, mobile and social first' agenda, placing future readiness at its core and promoting the adoption of the disruptive technology to evolve its destination offering."

Arabian Travel Market exhibition director Danielle Curtis conquered in that the power of data is redefining the customer journey.

Curtis believes the travel show provides the platform for tourism players to engage while driving the development of sustainable tourism

"The question remains, in a world of accelerating technology disruption, how can the hospitality industry continue to keep up with the rapidly evolving innovations surrounding it? "In our effort to address this question, cutting-edge technology and innovation has been adopted as our spotlight theme for 2019 and will be integrated across all shows vertical and planned activities … identifying the top tourism trends that have the greatest growth potential is one of the most valuable insights ATM has to offer," she said.

Meanwhile, ZTA officials met with Saudi Arabia director of tourism Majed Alghanim on possible areas of cooperation and strategic partnerships between the two destinations. "We are looking at working with organisations that are like-minded. Zimbabwe has done well in tourism and they have some of the best places to visit," said Aghanim.

ZTA head of cooperate affairs Godfrey Koti added: "We largely discussed issues to do with cooperation and how their tourism authority has managed to circumvent around thorny issues, how they manage their tourism campaigns. They also have a vision 2030 they are chasing almost similar to the Zimbabwe one and we spoke around issues of any possible strategic cooperation between the two destinations," Koti told the Daily News.

Saudi Arabia is the third ranked most popular international destination of travellers from the Middle East region with Egyptian capital of Cairo leading the way as the most searched city destination overall.

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