NDAMU SANDU
Leisure airline, Eurowings Discover, says Victoria Falls is an attractive addition to its portfolio in a boost for Zimbabwe’s tourism industry on a recovery path after being buffeted by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The carrier, a new leisure airline of the Lufthansa Group, begins flights to Victoria Falls on March 29 initially with three weekly flights on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays until mid-November when it is expected to increase the frequency.
“The destination is an attractive addition to the carrier´s leisure portfolio and pays tribute to the increasing popularity of Africa as travel destination,” the airline said in written responses to Business Times inquiries.
Describing Victoria Falls as a “unique destination” the airline will become the only carrier operating direct connections between Europe and the resort city.
Operating out of Frankfurt and Munich (Germany), the new carrier takes travellers to short, medium and long-haul leisure destinations across the world.
As part of the Lufthansa network, travellers benefit from direct connections and seamless transfers to and from all German and European Lufthansa destinations with one transfer in Frankfurt or Munich, as well as an end-to-end booking process, the airline said.
The entry of Eurowings comes as the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a private sector arm of the World Bank, has pledged to help Zimbabwe and the private sector to attract more airlines and flights to Victoria Falls to revive the tourism sector, recovering from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The support by the IFC is part of a broader, multi-year tourism programme between IFC and Zimbabwe—the Zimbabwe Destination Development Programme—designed to revitalise and increase the competitiveness of the country’s tourism industry.
Victoria Falls is Zimbabwe’s main tourism hub and supports around 25,000 direct jobs. Travel restrictions imposed due to the Covid-19 pandemic collapsed global tourism and forced businesses in the Victoria Falls area to retrench thousands of employees.
The entry also comes after Zimbabwe recently designated Victoria Falls as an international financial services centre in the last leg of reforms to make the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) attractive to investors.
An international financial services centre caters for customers outside the jurisdiction of the domestic economy, dealing with flows of finance, financial products and services across borders.
In 2017, Zimbabwe designated Victoria Falls as an SEZ with two areas of specialty: finance and tourism.
