Vic Falls hotels 100% full ahead of Sadc

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HOTELS and lodges in Victoria Falls are 100% booked ahead of the Sadc Heads of State and government summit this month, an official has said.

HOTELS and lodges in Victoria Falls are 100% booked ahead of the Sadc Heads of State and government summit this month, an official has said. MTHANDAZO NYONI OWN CORRESPONDENT

The summit will be held between August 17 and 18, but will be preceded by the meeting of Council of Ministers between August 14 and 15.

In an interview with Southern Eye Business yesterday, Zimbabwe Council for Tourism regional representative Barbra Murasiranwa said local delegates would be forced to seek accommodation from locals offering it at their houses.

“In terms of occupancy, we are 100% booked and we don’t have any place to put our delegates.

“Some of our guests would be forced to seek accommodation from individuals,” Murasiranwa said.

She said they had a meeting with other stakeholders to deliberate what they should do to provide accommodation for stranded delegates.

She said the situation was necessitated by the fact that August was generally a busy month in the tourism calendar in the country.

“We cannot say business is booming per se because this is our month of business. It was just coincidental,” she said.

Some of the hotel and lodges which are fully booked include Ilala Lodge Hotel, Victoria Falls, Elephant Hills, Rainbow, A’ Zambezi River Safari Lodge, Victoria Falls Safari Lodge, Stanley and Livingstone, and Cresta Sprayview Hotel.

More than 600 high level delegates are expected to attend the summit.

The theme for this year’s summit is “Sadc strategy for economic transformation: Leveraging the region’s diverse resources for sustainable economic and social development through beneficiation and value addition”.

The regional summit follows the successful co-hosting of last year’s United Nations World Tourism Organisation general assembly.

The country’s tourism industry has been on a recovery path since dollarisation in 2009, a development that has seen the return of tourists from traditional source markets such as the United Kingdom and United States.