African countries have worked hard to promote and maintain their tourism products under the supervision of the African Tourism promotion Initiative (ATPI).Mr. Otunba Olusegun Runsewe, the Director General of the Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation (NTDC),said African countries have advertised Africa by working together to promote Africa as a one big product.
During the opening of the new Zimbabwe’s tourism logo at the FITUR travel fair in Madrid, Spain, Runsewe appreciated the work done by Zimbabwe to promote their country as a one product and encouraged other African countries to use the approach.
In 2009 when Runsewe became the tourism minister, he made a promise that Zimbabwe would not be a problem to African tourism products and since then, the tourist arrivals have increased in the country. He also said that they were happy with what the African countries were doing and said Nigeria has advertised the tourism products and this has attracted more investors to invest in ecotourism, educational tourism, cultural tourism, sports tourism.
At the end of the meeting, Runsewe said all the countries that participated in the launch were to leave with many contacts and useful business ideas that could hopefully be used. He also that they were planning to include Nigeria among the countries that gain from golf as sports tourism because a lot of money is gained from it.
The African Tourism promotion Initiative (ATPI) was formed in February the previous year by a number of different African countries during the FITUR in Madrid and Otunba Runsewe was elected as the president. Other people that were at the meeting where Mrs. Cokozile Xaxa, Zimbabwe’s Ambassador to France, the African Regional Director of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the deputy tourism minister of South Africa, Mr. Osmane Ndiaye, David Hamadziripi, the tourism minister of Lesotho, and others.
The Zimbabwe Minister of Tourism Engineer Walter Mzembi thanked all the members that attended the meeting for appreciating Zimbabwe and he introduced their current package audio-visual that showed Zimbabwe is wonderful therefore promoting the country’s tourism.
