Making Vic Falls a destination to Thai for
AS THE sun sets on the Zambezi River near the tourist town of Victoria Falls, the bustle of a popular local arts market melts away with the African savannah heat.
Hidden in the upper floor of the market, the Nam Tok Thai restaurant was lit up by colourful lanterns. With tables set, Madam Toy, owner and chef of the restaurant, walked into the kitchen, tossing out the spices she brought from Bangkok to prepare an authentic Thai cuisine for Asian tourists traveling to this country far away from their homes.
Toy had previously run a successful Thai take-away restaurant in the Zimbabwean capital of Harare, but she decided to rent the spacious property here a year ago to cash in on an anticipated tourism boom surrounding the Victoria Falls, Africa’s most famous waterfalls which is on par with the Niagara Falls in the US and the Iguazu Falls in South America. “The previous tenant rented this place for three months. Business was not good and he left. But I say I will hold on and wait,” Toy said.
The completion this month of an expanded airport in the town after 2½ years of construction is the good news Toy has long been waiting for. With a $150 million (R2.24bn) soft loan from the Export-Import Bank of China, the airport has been expanded to include a 4 000m runway, a new terminal with air bridges, and spacious aircraft slots, said Zhang Xinbin, a manager of the contractor, China Jiangsu Inter national Economic and Technical Co-operation Group.
“People were not coming to the Victoria Falls because it was simply too difficult to get here,” Zhang said. “But now it can accommodate most longhaul, wide-body aircraft, tourists will be on their way.”
David Chawota, head of the Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe, said the airport’s capacity to handle passenger flows has tripled to 1.5 million a year with the expansion. “It can accommodate flights from anywhere in the world. It is now possible for direct connections between Victoria Falls and our key tourism source markets,” Chawota said.
Straddling Zambia and Zimbabwe, the Victoria Falls has the world’s widest white-water curtain 1.7km-wide, surpassing both the Niagara and the Iguazu. Its height at the centre is 108m, twice the height of the Niagara. Despite its charm, the tourism figures do not look good. According to the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority, for- eign visitors in the country totalled 930 276 in the first half of 2015, of whom 87 percent were from the African continent. For the Victoria Falls, the number of visitors stands at about 15 000 yearly, compared with 1 million visitors the Niagara gets every year.
Zimbabwean Tourism Minister Walter Mzembi bemoaned that while the Niagara generates $30bn of tourism income every year, the Victoria Falls brings in less than $1bn.
Zimbabwe once enjoyed the status as the regional air hub in the 1990s, when the Harare International Airport served 46 international flights. In the last decade, however, the aviation and tourism sectors collapsed as the economy went into a freefall, and Western sanctions only exacerbated the situation.
The Vic Falls ranks as the top tourist destination not only in Zimbabwe, but also in the re- gion, and hopes are high that the Vic Falls airport expansion project, due to be completed this month, will lead to increased tourism. “The project makes the Falls an important centre for tourism in the southern African region,” said Paul Matamisa, of Zimbabwe’s Council for Tourism.
Mzembi said his gover nment would push for the relaxation of visas and the upgrade of lodging and entertainment facilities to draw more arrivals in a bid to grow tourism into a $5bn industry by 2020.
Official figures show Zimbabwe has been receiving 3 800 to 5 500 Chinese tourists a year.
For Toy, a possible surge of Chinese tourists is good news for her Thai restaurant. “I know Chinese tourists will come to my restaurant. As east Asians, our stomachs are more used to steamed rice,” she said. – Xinhua