TOURISM Council of Zambia (TCZ) yesterday challenged government to urgently adopt practical measures if tourism is to become the main pillars of the economy.

And TCZ chairman Mark O’Donnell has revealed that 60 per cent of wealthy and highly educated people in developed countries had never heard of Zambia or knew nothing at all about the country.

When asked to comment on the lessons learnt following missed opportunities created during the recent 2010 world cup held in South Africa, O’Donnell stated that the tournament was great for Africa and it has gone a long way to change the way people think about Africa.

“From the onset, I always said that the benefits for tourism will be the legacy created by the world cup and the good will that this brought to Southern Africa and in going forward we have to capitalise on that good will and take advantage of it. There are several things we have to do to take advantage of the good will in order to create jobs and wealth for the country,” O’Donnell stated.

“Tourism is currently a small but growing sector and government has stated they would like to see that tourism is the second largest employer of people in the country and I think this is possible and we should do all the things we need to do in order to make tourism one of the main pillars of the economy.”

He stated that there was not a single thing that would make a big difference but rather the adoption of several practical actions.

“Red tape is holding the industry back. There is simply too much and rather than make it easier for people to go into the tourism industry, this is one of the most regulated industries in the country.

We need to see licences removed, less government intervention in the industry and for the government to facilitate rather than regulate and the cost of doing business is too high and we have to work towards making our products more affordable so that we attract more people into the country,” stated O’Donnell.

“We have to improve our brand image in our source markets. In the areas where we are trying to attract visitors from, they simply do not know about Zambia .

From some of the research we have done, we have found that a staggering 60 per cent of wealthy highly educated people in North America, Europe and Asia either had never heard of Zambia or knew nothing at all about the country and if we work on these points we will certainly see an improvement in visitors’ numbers and job creation as a result.”