Tourism players meet to tackle bottlenecks

The public and private sector players in the tourism sector are meeting in Lilongwe to come up with solutions to address key bottlenecks affecting its growth.

Tourism is among the three priority sectors under agriculture, tourism and mining (ATM) strategy to drive economic transformation, but its performance has been below potential, contributing about 5.5 percent to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).

The Presidential Delivery Unit (PDU) sanctioned the meeting following a pre-lab engagement last month where some industry representatives identified poor infrastructure, stiff legal framework, poor marketing and product development as key bottlenecks hindering the growth of the sector.

Minister of Tourism Vera Kamtukule opened the event on Monday and acknowledged that while it is expensive to come to Malawi, there are other issues that put off tourists, obscuring the country’s potential to become a competitive tourist destination.

She said: “It is really expensive to come to Malawi than to go to Zambia. When a tourist comes here, they might have really wanted to come, but what do they experience while here.

“We have Lake Malawi and the Sunbird Waterfront [in Salima], what next? Tourism is not just about visiting a place, it is about the experience. So, we need to find ways of improving that experience for tourists.”

Kamtukule cited in adequate exciting leisure services in top tourist destinations, including at Lake Malawi, police that inconvenience road travellers with frequent check points and begging and expensive hospitality services, among others.

The participants from government institutions, private sector and non-governmental organisations were put into three groups to specifically dissect three bottlenecks and come up with recommended solutions.

Head of PDU Janet Banda said the labs approach is a game-changer that has never happened before and promises progress.

“On our part as a backroom office of the President, we conducted a pre-lab on tourism in May to start distilling the issues that are affecting growth in the tourism sector,” she said.

Banda, who is also Deputy Secretary to the President and Cabinet, said the engagements have generated positive strides and issues that will be tackled in this lab.

Tourism Council of Malawi board chairperson Justin Zinkambani said in an interview that the private sector expects solutions to the key three challenges that were identified.

He said the private sector already presented the issues that impede their growth that needed policy intervention and would be detailed through the initiative.

The Malawi Government Annual Economic Report shows that Malawi had a stable increase in the number of international tourist arrivals, rising at an average of five percent annually from 2015 to 2019 due to increased tourism marketing activities, a rise in cultural and arts festivals and revival in Malawi’s wildlife population through the restocking and translocation of critical species.

However, the trend in 2020 changed as international visitor arrivals dropped by 80 percent to around 198 905 as a result of global travel restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Last year, the contribution of travel and tourism to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) was at K467.5 billion or 5.5 percent.

This is a rise from K420.1 billion or five percent of GDP the previous year.