Livingstone recorded an increase in tourist arrivals for the year 2018 with over 250, 000 tourists having visited the city.
Acting Regional Tourism Development and Research Officer for South-West region, Gilpin Sikate said Livingstone had recorded a total number of 250,182 tourist visits from January to November 2018 as compared to 183,480 visits recorded in 2017.
In response to a press query to ZANIS in Livingstone, Mr. Sikate said the tourists visited various sites, and popular among them was the Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park, the National Museum and the Victoria Falls.
He said the Mosi-O-Tunya National Park recorded a total of 18,883 tourist visits, while the National Museum received 29,478 visits and the Victoria Falls had a total of 201,821 visits during the period under review.
Mr. Sikate however, noted that in 2017, the Mosi-O-Tunya National Park had 21,945 international visitors; the National Museum recorded 28,171 and the Victoria Falls had 133,364 visitors.
“The statistics also indicate that the National Park recorded a decrease in domestic visitors in 2018 with only 8,859 visiting the tourist site as compared to 11,615 in 2017,” he said.
Mr. Sikate attributed the overall increase in the number of international tourist arrivals to marketing efforts and tourism product development within Livingstone by the Ministry of Tourism.
Any idea how many visited Vic falls town across the Zambezi?
That is a good question @Maganizo.
And the answer is likely to be “a lot more than those that visited stone”.
Zambia is too expensive for nothing. Hotels and food prices are too high, yet quality of both is very low.
Zambians are too dull to realise that if they made prices fairer, volume of tourists would multiply ten-fold easily.
Worse still, our government do not understand simple tourism baiting.
Wasted years indeed.
I am sure they have heard that there is a new airline that’s why!!
Is that not the reason we are coming up with a new airline.
Please recheck the statistics, it cannot be
What new airline?
Ah, you mean that lame skim (Zambia Airways) that PF will use to siphon even more tax payers money?
Wasted years indeed.
I own a tourism business in livingstone and we have seen a decrease in business and every other tourism operator i know reports the same. Group business down 30% this year. Where do these stastics come from and how are they corralated.
Are you doubting this PF’s ability to cook books?
This is something they do very well.
This most likely day visitors from across Zimbabwe…
250000. Pathetic
Bet you that number is full of visitors from RSA who fly in for a few hours not spend a penny in Zambia…
77% of passengers on flights to Livingstone are transited across the border to Zim and stay there. also reason why Zambia is so expensive is the taxes and levies put in by MOT and of course these are passed on to the consumer. cooked figures, if you divide those figures into bed nights in all 47 lodges in the region that works out to a 89% rooms full and when i was there twice the lodges were empty, maybe 25% full. even the Sun had laid off quite a few staff.