Malawi observes Tourism Month in grand style

Malawi: As World Tourism Day approaches, the Malawi Ministry of Tourism, Wildlife, and Culture, the Malawi Tourism Council, and tourism stakeholders organised a 6-kilometre tourism walk in the capital city of Lilongwe.

The walk is part of the global commemoration of World Tourism Day, which is celebrated on September 27th.

The annual tourism day, with the theme Rethink Tourism aims to encourage all tourism players to reflect on where they went wrong and how they can improve for the sake of the tourism industry, which suffered greatly during the two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the end of the walk at the Botanic Gardens, the Minister in charge, Dr Michael Usi, stated that tourism players should examine the strategies they used to achieve their goals and learn from their failures in order to improve them.

"We learn from mistakes that we make to do things better and there are so many flaws that as tourism players we encountered along the way since we joined this tourism industry, now is the right time to change the way we have been doing things and do it better than before," said Usi.

He went on to say that Malawi is dedicating the entire month of September to tourism activities in order to educate the entire country about what tourism is all about.

"As you have noted since 1 st September we have had a number of activities, functions and meetings to make sure that we sensitise the locals and everyone in Malawi and across about tourism,” he said.

In his remarks, Malawi Tourism Council Chairman Justin Dzinkambani stated that tourism is one of Malawi's major foreign exchange earners and that there is a need for an all-inclusive approach to further uplift the industry, which has been severely impacted by COVID-19 in the last two years.

Since 1980, the 27th of September has been designated as World Tourism Day. The date commemorates the adoption of the Organization's Statutes in 1970, which paved the way for the establishment of UNWTO five years later.