Published on : Wednesday, June 20, 2018
The motivation to rebrand the country has witnessed the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) taking an important role being part of the organizers for the football match of today, pitting a world class legends team against the local legends.
As per Karikoga Kaseke, ZTA chief executive, this is more than a football match.
“What we want them to do is to use their combined collateral to market tourism in this new dispensation. Secondly, we want to make them brand ambassadors for our investment, especially the fact that the President is saying Zimbabwe is open for business.
We want them to be ‘Zimbabwe is open for business’ ambassadors. They will appear in televised documentaries where they will be talking about Zimbabwe,” Kaseke told NewsDay.
For the local legends, government will foot the bill and the curtain raisers, Dynamos and Highlanders with the local tourism industry chipping in to lessen the burden.
Yet despite the huge investment, there are no immediate benefits.
“It’s a promotional match to support tourism. When you go to a promotional mission, the results will not come immediately, maybe 12 months, 18 months the results will start coming. What we do today in tourism will not give us results today. But what we do today will give us results maybe after 12 months. The results we are getting today are not from what we are doing now. We are very confident that this will bring results at a later stage,” Kaseke said.