The Zambia Tourism Board (ZTB) has officially launched Green season domestic tourism campaign aimed at encouraging Zambians to go for holidays.
Speaking during a press briefing in Lusaka this morning, ZTB Managing Director Felix Chaila said the period is meant to help lodges and hotels remain open for the festive season as most of them shut down during this period due to lack of business.
He explained that foreign tourists who occupy space in most lodges and hotels opt to spend their holidays at home and that this is the time for local tourists to take up the challenge and occupy lodges.
He said the Zambia Tourism Board is happy that there is overwhelming response from the private sector in terms of reducing prices for the lodges and hotels.
He added that it is perceived in Zambia that it is expensive to spend a night at any lodge saying that mind set is deceiving a lot of the people saying it is cheaper to spend a holiday with a family.
He has since showered praises to the private sector for collaborating well with the board in offering best tourism services to both local and foreign tourists.
Zambians need to be encouraged to start making family holidays as part of the accepted norm. Families should be able to save and go out for a weekend, week with the whole family in another town, city, resort, lake area, national parks to relax and spend time away from home. Instead of spending all the weekends enjoying yourself in pubs with friends, why not save once in a while for your son and wife and daughters to chill and bond? It can be a lovely experience. Zambia though needs to start looking at its prices, hotels, lodges are very expensive in Zambia even for the services that they provide, I don’t know if it is due to lack of capacity or just poor pricing mentality and policies. I find prices cheaper even here in the UK, across some European countries including East Africa.
@1. I totally agree with everything you have said Mwana Ka Kalunda. However, in addition to that the state must formulate laws that make it compulsory for every worker in the land (including house sitters, farm labourers, grave diggers, etc) to annually go on holiday (leave as it is known in Zambia) with families. Holiday days MUST not be turned into cash. It should be law for employers not to allow days-for-cash. It should be law also to make companies organize subsidized day or weekend holiday trips for employees to places such as Kasaba Bay, Lake Bangweuluetc. Employers conducting such trips should deserve incentives from the government. I hear roads to most of the towns/places are now beautiful. So, most coach companies could cash-in on these holiday trips and make more money. Proper
@Mwana Ka Kalunda. Proper govt policies would make lodging an whole round business as opposed to seasonal. Here in the UK, Europe and the Americas tourism is deliberately made whole round and hotels and lodges receive visitors all the times. However, there are certain seasons when business increase due to different external timings. Zambians should be copying these positive things from countries such as SPAIN, UK, Portugal etc. SPAIN is in capital letters because anyone who’s been to Spain would have high stories on how tourism is conducted there. SPANISH are GOOD in tourism. The other thing Zambian businesses must understand is professionalism. Treat all customers (foreign and local) same. Most if not all (apart from Sandie’s Creations) treat local clients with no respect at all.
Bloggers, can you help me score HH, EL, NM, & RB in the following sectors:
1. enhancing our international relations
2. job creation
3. enhancing manufacturing sector
4. enhancing agriculture sector
5. enhancing mining industry
6. de-cadrelization of the civil service
7. general improvement of social life.
Please use scale of 1-5 in rating these individuals. 5 being the highest score. Thanking you in advance for helping me to choose the right candidate on 20th Jan 2015.
I really care for my country & I would like to put governance of this country in right hands. Fellow Zambians, are you ready to help Zambia & Zambians redeem what is theirs? 50 yrs of wasted yrs!! Let us push together.
Ndine mwana wa anyoko!! uli tole…….you are too educated to see the realities of grassroot politics. Can you please refine your questions in a layman`s language rather than sounding so educated, but understanding less of the realities of the current Zambian political and voter landscape
HH doesn’t knw and may never know about poor people whom he goes to only during election times. SATA was very unseasonal about poor people. Even when he finally, became president he continued visiting very poor people only this time with roads, bridges, schools, hospitals/health centres, universitie presents, etc. I was talking to a highly professional person who visited Zambia and came back 3 days ago. He highly spoke of positive changes in Zambia. He said what KK and MMD achieved in 27 and 20 years respectively, SATA achieve them in just 2 years. He confessed that reading WD did mislead him a lot as he was made to believe that PF was doing nothing. He was shocked when he visited Zambia to travel on good tarred roads when going to Luwingu via Pedicle road.
@ 2.2 Peter one thing you need to know is HH understands poverty because he lived it and resolved it would not swallow him thus he worked hard to free himself from it. His helping hand started way before joining politics. His benevolence and heart for the have-nots, is unsung and he does not encourage singing about it only wishing that the recipients would in turn pass it on. Do a bit of research and you’ll get to know the selfless silent side of HH
The Zambia Domestic Tourism program is a load of crap because ZTB have basically, since the launch of this programme months ago still maintained their focus on the traditional destinations in Zambia of Livingstone, South Luangwa etc. Plus a focus on attending numerous international fairs a with dubious results in terms of increasing arrivals to the country. The ZTB need a new MD who will focus on opening up the rest of the country to tourism development. Chaila is not practical. That’s why we never see him promoting the rest of the country by physically being there.
What is the basic purpose of religion?
Religion is designed to focus the people’s attention and energy on a single, unchanging, uncompromising and invisible supreme being who allegedly created an inferior human race just for some extra companionship and love for himself and then supposedly foisted a set of oppressive and in some cases arbitrary rules on them, which if broken would be met with unimaginable punishment.
This keeps the followers in a continuing state of fear and compliance.
They are afraid to question the intentions of this invisible being and they are afraid of even expressing their own individuality in many cases. Christians and others are taught that they have virtually no power to do anything except pray, worship and do good deeds.
They are taught to practice self denial and are told that their own will is totally irrelevant. Religious followers believe that they are yielding their will over to a benevolent cosmic individual who has single-handedly created the whole universe and has their best interests at heart when in fact they are handing over their will and freedoms to hidden groups of religious elites for the elites own personal gains.
It appears that religion must constantly degrade and humiliate its followers in order to glorify and elevate its god. Unfortunately many people appear eager to give away their power to authority and seem to have a need and even a desire to be ruled and disciplined by it.
Worshipping gods is futile and is nothing more than an ancient primitive custom practiced by weak minded and superstitious people. It has no place in the 21st century. The reason we have life in this world is to experience life in this world, not to spend our entire lives studying an old book, looking up to the sky and worshiping an invisible ruler in another realm.
IS THERE A GOD OR IS GOD JUST A SANTA FOR ADULTS?
What is God?
Is there a white bearded old man up there creating and presiding over everything?
If there is then what are all the zillions of other smart and creative souls doing in the cosmos besides sitting on their hands?
For millennia people have been asking this question but there is one thing that some have thought might be the answer, and that is that maybe collectively WE are God.
God might be like a computer CPU and we might be the millions of transistors inside it.
There is no master transistor (God) which gives life to all the others and on which all the others depend. We each function independently and also as one. One of the transistors (Jesus) did possibly emerge briefly to show us an example of a better way to…
WORSHIP
What is worship?
Worship is the act of sending/offering love, devotion and gratitude to a deity or idol.
They say that love is understanding and yet no one really understands God at all. How can you love something or someone whom you can neither understand or communicate with properly?
Love and worship is also about admiration, adoration and gratitude but how can one feel these things towards someone whom they’ve never seen or spent time with?
No God has ever asked anyone to worship him so man’s desire to worship a deity is nothing more than an ego based need to make himself feel useful to a god who otherwise probably has no real use for anything man has to offer.
Why would you worship someone just for carrying out their own agenda? Would an all powerful creator create a dysfunctional bunch of lemmings just for the purpose of worship? Why then give us intelligence, free choice, diversity, individuality and a strong will and then threaten to disown or terminate us as soon as we try to use them?
If a single true God does exist then creating a race of selfish, sinful, ignorant, arrogant, egotistical, money hungry and sex obsessed beings for the sole purpose of worshiping him would have to be the stupidest thing he’s ever done.
It’s fairly clear that some people have allowed themselves to become ignorant and dumbed-down by the pompous tradition of religion.
@sankalimba….
…..I think the ‘stupidest’ thing god has ever done is to create such a malfunction transistor like you…..
…We are discussing ZTB here bwana….
….the dumbest thing ZTB did was to be brain washed and convinced by those white guys to review/change our befitting slogan of ‘ZAMBIA THE REAL AFRICA’ to the useless connotation of ‘lets explore’…..
…at one time some-one proposed that Zambian should be charged 30/40% less on all hotels/motels/guesthouses charges…what happened to that proposal…??
Domestic tourism is the largest form and bigger than international tourism. It’s such a shame Felix Chaila never returns emails for international business. The Livingston brunch when you call and leave your details for Mr. Chaila since Lusaka never responds, you get a call from someone soliciting business saying they are a business man from Zambia. This is such a turn-off and maybe the reason investors don’t invest much because they are scared. Your secretary needs to give private and sensitive information to the person it’s intended for and not strangers who have nothing to do with the Tourism Board and calling North America soliciting people. Of course Mr. Chaila would have been aware of this if he had returned our calls and emails in the first place.
ZTB is dead and i wonder why it exists. You chaps at more interested in travelling overseas than promotinglocal tourism. You just talk but dont walk the talk. ZTB has misplaced priorities. Tourism in Zambia is private sector driven and they single handedly market our Zambia using their own resources while yours are for shoping during international trade shows. Shame!
You are supposed to market Zambia as a destination from each province and what it has to offer in terms of accommodation, accessibility, attractions etc. Do you have video’s about Zambia that visitors can watch on your site showcasing Zambia either in 3’D or HD? How about the locals and showcasing the locals ways of life which tourists can learn from and also add by exchanging and sharing cultures and values. You need to have people who actually know what they are doing and not people who dress the part and have no clue at all. Transportation and security are very important so how are you going to show these visitors that its a safe country? You need people with real skills and qualifications to run this department. There is so much potential that is sitting idle.