Visa regime policy and tourism recovery and development in Zimbabwe

Abstract

This paper reports the results on the impact of the current visa regime policy on tourism recovery and development in Zimbabwe. The focus was on finding out how the visa regime could impact on efforts to bring into the country more visitors following the decline in visitor inflows from 2000 to 2008. Data was collected from selected visitors from different member states which require visas to enter into the county in the period between January 2010 and July 2010.The findings shows that visa restrictions play a small part in discouraging visitors to visit Zimbabwe. The visa regime policy was designed in such a way that it was easy for passport holders from traditional markets to have relatively easy passage into Zimbabwe. It was also discovered that visa restrictions were part of international travel conditions but how to get the visa became the competitive advantage or disadvantage a destination can have compared with its competitors. Zimbabweǯs traditional markets believed that the visa was not difficult to get nor was it too expensive as to scare away visitors. However, the emerging markets such as China who are in Group C had problems getting the visa as they were required to apply for the visa before traveling to Zimbabwe