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Herald Reporter
The Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) on Wednesday met tourism industry players over pricing, the state of tourism and to find ways of manoeuvring the prevailing economic challenges in the sector.

There was general consensus that the tourism sector was facing challenges with the cost of doing business and ultimately, pricing.

Speaking after holding a meeting with the Tourism Business Council, tourism operators and other tourism sector players, ZTA chief executive Dr Karikoga Kaseke said ridiculous pricing was chasing away tourists.

“It was a very successful and very fruitful meeting and we discussed everything. It was a no-holds barred and everybody was very clear on the issues discussed. I am very happy that they (operators) will rein each other and in particular the Tourism Business Council will make sure that they don’t put charges that are ridiculous,” he said.

“Especially when we are talking about foreign international tourists, it’s bad. That was now basically chasing away tourists and I would like to think we have intervened at the right time. I am certain that it (pricing challenges) will be resolved by the end of this                                                                                    week.”

Tourism Business Council president Paul Matamisa said the meeting was fruitful as it managed to bridge the gap in understanding the market forces that are prevailing.

“We also spoke about issues of the FCA accounts, Nostro accounts and so on, how they’re going to be looked at and how we are going to be dealing with them going forward,” he said.

“It appears though that at the moment various banks have got their own policies on how they look at the foreign currency accounts as well as the RTGS accounts and the local accounts. It doesn’t look like there is a common way of do we things and that creates a lot of problems for operators.

“Every bank appears to have its own way of doing things but we are saying the RBZ must intervene so that we have a common system that is operating in all banks for these nostro and RTGS accounts.”

The meeting comes after President Mnangagwa said Government, among other factors, sought to attract investors in different economic sectors and priority would be on improving the ease of doing business.

The meeting was part of a series of similar meetings to be held more often in a bid to get the tourism sector operating and moving in the same direction when marketing destination Zimbabwe.