Zimbabwe allows tour operators to enter Victoria Falls Park to take footage

Zimbabwe has decided to allow tour operators and hoteliers to enter the Victoria Falls National Park to take footage of the falls, for marketing purposes. The falls is said to be the largest curtain of falling water in the world and is shared between Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Victoria Falls, a world heritage site, was closed from early April ever since the outbreak of the pandemic. The Victoria Falls is a town in western Zimbabwe and a gateway to the massive waterfall of the same name. Here, the Zambezi river plummets over a cliff before flowing through a series of gorges.

The Victoria Falls National Park houses the Rainforest, Livingstone’s statue and the best view to the forest which are tourism draw cards in the country’s prime resort town.

The decision came soon after Zimbabwe’s tourism minister Nqobizitha Mangaliso Ndlovu and his public works counterpart, July Moyo, visited Victoria Falls earlier this week.

Scores of tour operators were pooled into groups of 20 each in line with lockdown rules, to visit the Rainforest on Wednesday between 8am and 5.45pm. After the visit to the Rainforest, some of the operators said they were already marketing the country on social media to their clients in different source markets.

The tourism sector is one of Zimbabwe’s major economic mainstays, contributing significantly to the country’s GDP. About 2.6 million international tourists visited the Southern African country in 2018.

The expenditure by tourists in Zimbabwe has also risen remarkably over the past decade, rising from only 523 million US dollars in 2009 to over 1 billion US dollars in 2019.

The country’s most remarkable products are its abundant animal species and natural environment, a number of medieval era city ruins and multiple world heritage sites and several national parks.

From the craggy magnificence of the Eastern Highlands to the pristine wildlife in its national parks to the Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe can hold its own as one of the best tourist destinations in the world.

Victoria Falls, locally known as Mosi-O-Tunya (translated as smoke that thunders) is one of Seven Wonders of the World and one of Zambia’s and Zimbabwe’s most visited tourist destinations.