Tourism and Malawi 2063

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or a long time, Malawi’s tourism sector has relied on diverse natural resources, landscapes, cultures and friendly people that make it The Warm Heart of Africa.

For decades, the government has identified tourism as a crucial sector for national economic growth. It is also one of the anchors of the urbanisation pillar in Malawi 2063, long-term vision to make Malawi an inclusively wealthy and self-reliant nation.

However, tourist destinations can no longer rely on comparative advantage to beat competition as it can easily be imitated by competitors.

Brent Ritchie and Geoffrey Crouch, renowned experts on destination competitiveness, have argued that destinations cannot continue to rely on comparative advantage to achieve competitiveness because the comparative advantage is no longer natural.

For example, Kenyans and Tanzanians have long promoted their countries as Big Five safari destinations in reference to the presence of elephants, buffaloes, lions, leopards and rhinos.

However, Malawi, with the restoration and restocking of Liwonde National Park and Majete Wildlife Reserve, is positioning itself as Africa’s newest big five destination.

This confirms that comparative advantage is no longer sustainable.

So, how can Malawi achieve long-term tourism competitiveness?

First, infrastructure such as roads and power supply provide foundations upon which every successful tourist destination is built, but it remains limited.

The poor roads to top tourist attractions such as Nyika National Park and Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserves erode Malawi’s tourism competitiveness.

Improving them would make these attractions accessible all year round and gift tourists durable memories about Malawi.

However, the core attractions are the primary reasons why tourists choose Malawi over other destinations.

Malawi’s natural resources, culture and special events such as music festivals are some of the reasons tourists come.

Since the majority of Malawi’s tourism products are nature-based, it is critical to recognise that climate change poses a threat on our tourism industry. As such, the nation needs to seriously consider climate change issues.

With a rich and diverse culture, it is also high time Malawi developed strategies to monetise cultural events and make them sustainable and economically beneficial to local people. Cultural tourism provides an opportunity of strengthening local economies.

Most importantly, the nation needs collaborative destination management approaches such as increasing the appeal of Malawi’s core resources and attractions such as lake and safari experiences while adapting to external constraints and opportunities.

Interestingly, the National Tourism Policy strongly highlights the need for collaboration in tourism.If properly implemented, the policy could help ensure all tourism-related development promotes a competitive destination while meeting the aspirations of all Malawians and contributing to Malawi 2063.

Traditionally, Malawi’s destination marketing strategy has centred on limited ways of promoting the country; hence, the need to consider issues of product development, tourism value chain and pricing mechanism.

Remarkably, in the recently launched National Tourism Investment Master Plan, government has identified 10 priority projects to introduce new tourism offerings.

All in all, public health threats such as Covid-19 and cholera have considerable impacts on Malawi’s tourism competitiveness.

The discovery of Covid-19 led to travel restrictions, reducing the traffic and access to our tourist sites.

As such, there is a need to design controls at the height of any external factor likely to affect Malawi’s tourism. Learn from Zambia’s collaborative pandemic management, which stabilised tourism amid the global pandemic.

The pandemic has also demonstrated the susceptibility of Malawi’s tourism competitiveness to external shocks. This awareness is crucial to intensify promotion of domestic tourism and sustain its competitiveness.

Malawi can only achieve sustainable competitiveness if tourists’ experience is enhanced by improving infrastructures, understanding Malawi’s core attractors and making collaborative destination management work.