... Minister Rwodzi welcomes international buyers at Masvingo Airport
By Gideon Madzikatidze
MASVINGO – Tourism and Hospitality Industry Minister, Barbara Rwodzi has ranked MICE tourism as Zimbabwe’s highest-yielding tourism cluster, outperforming leisure and mass-market segments on per-capita spend, with the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom and other European markets identified as the country’s top source and spender markets.
Addressing journalists at Masvingo airport during the third reception of international tourists, Rwodzi said the economic value of tourism must be measured not just by arrivals but by tourism receipts and average spend per visitor.
“When it’s MICE, look at the nature of people who would be coming for a business meeting because it’s a convention for business. Definitely and automatically they are high spenders,” Rwodzi said.
“So sometimes we arrive (as the) ten of us, but our spending may be low. But when we see them arriving (the two) of them, and you are rest assured that the reason for meeting has an effect of high spending. The two are more critical,” Rwodzi said.
The Minister provided a breakdown of Zimbabwe’s major source markets, citing data that informs the Ministry’s market segmentation and product development strategy.
“America is our number one source market in terms of numbers when they arrive. And then we have the UK, we have the Germany, we have maybe France thereabout and Italy, they are always fighting maybe for the fourth base. But in 2025 it was Australia on the fourth base,” she said.
However, Rwodzi stressed that volume does not equal value.
“But the analysis then told us that Australians are the highest spenders. Even if they are sitting on number four, the money will be so much. Arrival is not the issue of that which we fight for. You know people can arrive in their thousands, but how much have they spend, the receipts. So Australians are at the top of spenders,” she added.
Rwodzi added that other key long-haul markets including the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain – continue to drive high-value tourism to Zimbabwe.
Minister Rwodzi said the Ministry’s 13-cluster tourism strategy was deliberately designed to drive yield management and reduce reliance on low-spend mass tourism.
“This is what we want for a health fair. So, MICE tourism cluster brings a lot of people who spend because of its own nature. People are discussing business and those people are already in jobs or they are running businesses. So they have the money to spend,” she said.
The Minister acknowledged that other clusters were still lagging in performance.
“But the other clusters, though contributing, we are still analysing on how they should contribute at par with MICE tourism since they are still struggling with contributing to the best of our expectations. We are still fighting and we are still analysing how best we can promote those other clusters. This is why we had been (this week) promoting sports, music and street carnival,” Rwodzi added.
Minister Rwodzi said MICE and other high-value events will be made a permanent fixture in the tourism calendar to ensure de-seasonalisation and year-round occupancy.
“This is why we are saying when we bring up this strategy we say it will be a permanent strategy. It will be a permanent event in Masvingo. Same as Save Beach in Birchenough bridge (Manicaland),” she added.
Industry analysts say the focus on MICE, health, and business events aligns with global trends where corporate travel and conventions generate higher RevPAR (revenue per available room), ancillary spend and B2B linkages compared to traditional leisure tourism.
The Ministry says it will continue targeting high-spend source markets through targeted destination marketing and improved airlift and conference infrastructure to grow Zimbabwe’s share of the global MICE market.