Zimbabwe's tourism woes in the last decade: hindsight lessons for African tourism planners and managers

In the decade since the Millennium, the political and economic antics of Zimbabwe have attracted massive media attention. While this has been instrumental in creating international awareness of the country, for tourism the effect has been a drastic drop in arrivals. Tourism industry businesses recorded their lowest demand statistics in decades. Since 2008 however, arrivals have increased gradually, but the destination is still struggling to restore itself to its former glory as a competitive force in southern Africa. The thesis of this paper is that instead of letting Zimbabwe's history in this respect go to waste, African tourism planners, and managers elsewhere, with the benefit of hindsight, can draw useful lessons for their own destinations. The aim is to stimulate academics and practitioners of tourism to reflect on the mistakes of planners in the past and forearm themselves for future planning decisions and research. Tourism planners cannot afford the luxury of learning only from their own mistakes: they need to learn from the mistakes of others.