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Rumbidzayi Zinyuke Manicaland Bureau
MOST hotels in the resort areas of Nyanga and Vumba are already fully booked for the festive season, the Hospitality Association of Zimbabwe (HAZ) has confirmed. A check by The Herald showed that major hotels like Troutbeck Resort, Montclair Hotel and Casino and Leopard Rock were already fully booked until January.

Some like Inn on the Vumba still have rooms, but are expecting more bookings before the end of this week. HAZ past president Mr George Manyumwa said hotels in Nyanga and Victoria Falls were fully booked by last week, while most other hotels in resort towns were booked from December 20 onwards.

“The festive season is looking good. Victoria Falls hotels are already full, so is Nyanga,” he said.
“The only challenge that we will have might be of our city hotels, whose occupancies might go down a bit because most people want to go out of the city for the holidays.” Mr Manyumwa said the city hotels might not suffer much due to an expected increase in Diasporans, who will be coming home for Christmas.

“This year we are expecting a lot of Diasporans to come home and this may increase occupancies in some city hotels,” he said. Mr Manyumwa said local travellers had contributed to the biggest chunk of those booked at most hotels following aggressive marketing of products on the local market.

He said while most hotels enjoyed high occupancies during the festive season, they would experience lower occupancy rates by mid-January until March. The period has traditionally been low season and most hotels normally take that time to upgrade their facilities in preparation for the Easter holidays in April.

“I encourage hotels to go on cost reduction mode to reduce costs during this period,” said Mr Manyumwa.
“They should come up with promotions during that low season so that they encourage people to utilise those rooms.” Demand for hotels in Manicaland during the off-peak season is largely driven by local business travel and conferencing, but a lot of joy-seekers troop to the Eastern Highlands during holidays like Christmas and Easter.