Villa Rental in Lanzarote

As a relatively new villa owner on Faro Park, in Playa Blanca, Lanzarote (Villa Jasmin - January 2007), I was determined to keep the standards of our villa high for holiday rental.

Before taking the plunge into villa ownership, my family and I had to do alot of to-ing and fro-ing, back and forth to Lanzarote whilst choosing the right area, the right villa and then signing paperwork and learning about the spanish laws etc. This meant that we stayed in many villas in and around Playa Blanca.

We were amazed to find such different standards in the villa rental market!

On a down side, some villas were in need of a good lick of paint, some had ice cold pools which claimed to be electrically heated but were obviously switched off to save electricity. Some were not very well equipped and some definately needed general TLC!

On an up side, this only made me more aware of what a guest would look for in a rented holiday home and therefore, what I was going to provide for our guests in Villa Jasmin.

I would say that in general, you get what you pay for, but I can honestly say that in our experience, this statement was just not true.

So, Villa owners in Lanzarote beware! The competition is getting stiffer and there are many new developments arriving all over the island. I would definately advise all Lanzarote villa owners to make the best of their assets before they get left behind.

Zimbabwe: Tourism Industry Far From Recovery

Shame Makoshori

THE breathtaking landscape on the fringes of Lake Kariba is home to one of nature's greatest events.

A spectacle that sees the migration of thousands of wild animals from the expansive forests, down the undulating mountains overlooking the Zambezi into the grassy floodplains that sandwich the still waters in search of fresh food.

Between April and October every year, as pools dotted across the mountain ranges begin to dry up and pastures turn from lush green to straw yellow, herds of impalas, elephants, buffaloes and other animals, sensing a change in the air strategically position themselves close to the lake waters for a six-month congregation that usually ends soon after the onset of the rainy season.

After the rains, the perpetual hunt for fresh grass drives the beasts southwards back to the mountains and further south of Tashinga National Park, into rural Nyaminyami in a permanent cycle of migration driven by the millennia-old and instinctive search for green grass.

Between 1990 and 1996 when Zimbabwe's tourism industry experienced a robust growth, close to 300 000 tourists visited the Zambezi Valley, touring places like Bumi Hills, the Ume River and Tiger Bay, to witness first hand the attractions offered by one of Africa's most sought after spectacles.

The popularity that hit these destinations was an epitome of what transpired across most destinations in Zimbabwe before government embarked on its violent approach to solving a simmering land dispute with former colonial power, Britain.

Foreign currency receipts spiralled from less than US$50 million in 1980 to US$232 million in 1996, but began to plunge, reaching US$61 million in 2003 in response to the assault and murders of white commercial farmers and political opponents of the state.

The impact was evident during a visit to Kariba last year.

Most safari lodges have crumbled and tall grass has replaced their once well-maintained yards.

The boom has been replaced by a massive recession and most entrepreneurs have crossed the border into Zambia because the foreign currency-generating tourists are no longer coming.

Wild animals, once a cheap source of foreign currency for the country, were roaming uninterrupted.

The reason for the deterioration of what once promised to be one of the backbones of Zimbabwe's economic growth?

Poor prioratisation in marketing.

Taking a cue from political dynamics that have tended to view Asian countries, especially China, as the panacea to Zimbabwe's economic turmoil, the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) has shifted attention to the east, pumping billions into cultivating a market that has clearly demonstrated no positive returns for over half a decade.

The ZTA's 2006 annual report indicates that despite the endless official trips to market Zimbabwe in Asia last year, only 6 000 more tourists were registered compared to the previous year.

Most of them sought businesses opportunities rather than holidays.

Ironically, tourism traffic from Europe and America, source-markets which government considers hostile, have remained the drivers of the industry in 2006 registering a combined 130 000 arrivals.

Asia registered a 19% growth from 31 000 to 37 000.

Tourism industry experts this week said government had wasted resources to attract a mostly third world market whose travelling patterns were erratic at the expense of money-spinning Western countries.

The annual report indicates that even when Asian tourists came into the country, their average stay in hotels had averaged two to three nights compared to those from the traditional Western markets whose average stay ranged between two and 13 days.

This has inflicted a serious knock on the industry.

Instead of focusing on the high value but low volume Western markets, Zimbabwe has witnessed a desperate effort to build mass tourism with little impact on the economy.

In 2003, 2,2 million tourists came to Zimbabwe and the country generated US$61 million, but 1,2 million tourists who arrived in 1997 before the "Look East" policy generated US$204 million for the economy.

Tourism minister Francis Nhema admitted this week the marketing campaign in Asia has had too many political overtones than actual work on the ground which had derailed all the positive forecasts.

"We are not marketing China more," said Nhema. "I think there had been better marketing efforts in Western markets than in China because we did not stop marketing."

He argued that new markets took time to respond, adding it would take a long time for Zimbabwe to begin enjoying the benefits of the current marketing efforts.






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"Unless we start balancing the frequency of flights to China, the number of tourists will remain low. British Airways flies into Zimbabwe more frequently than Air Zimbabwe's flights to China," he said.

Overall, foreign tourist arrivals took a 47% surge from 1,5 million in 2005 to 2,2 million in 2006.

But while the ZTA claims the whole statistical cycle was based on the World Tourism Organisation (WTO) definitions, the numbers gave a false impression that the sector is resurrecting when across the country everything seems to be crumbling.