• It is a necessary move.
• The countries that have been identified have potential to bring a lot of travellers into Zambia.
• Those countries are some of the source or core markets that Zambia will be looking at because they travel in huge numbers to holiday destinations.
Livingstone Tourism Association (LTA) says government’s proposal to waive visa requirement for tourists from selected countries in 2023 will increase tourist arrivals into Zambia.
Speaking in an interview with Money FM News, Association Chairperson Hillary Kashempa said the move is commendable because this is what players in the tourism industry have been advocating for in order to attract a lot of travellers into Zambia.
Mr. Kashempa noted that the countries that government has identified are some of the top travellers in the world, and this is why the country needed to attract them first in order to increase the number of travellers.
“It is a necessary move which we commend, from the time we have been advocating for zero rate of Visas for other countries, we looked at the outsource market. So we looked at those countries that have potential to bring a lot of travellers into Zambia, so that should have been the first market actually.
“Those countries are some of the source or core markets that we will be looking at and so the government has been spot on identifying them, we agree with them because this is a positive step looking at the number of countries which have been identified, they form part of the core market,” Mr. Kashempa said.
He added that government has been spot on identifying the countries which are part of the source or core markets that Zambia has been looking at, as a way of reviving the economy and to recover quickly from the Covid-19 shocks.
“What we needed was to move a step further, even African countries move a lot but when you look at these they travel in huge numbers to holiday destinations and this is where we needed to attract from first in order to increase the number of tourists in our country, in order to revive the economy, in order to recover quickly from Covid-19 shocks and also in order for us to realign ourselves and change the direction to more of a hub. These are the bigger source markets that is where the key is, so we needed to tap from them first,” he added.
In the 2023 national budget, government proposes to waive visa requirement for tourists from the United Kingdom, United States of America, Canada, Norway, Australia, China, Japan, South Korea, the Gulf States and the European Union.
