Tourists stay away from Zimbabwe

This Tuesday saw a new report released by the World Economic Forum detailing 130 countries in the world and their tourism draws. The 2008 Travel and Tourism Competitiveness report studies selected countries and factors that make tourism development feasible and eventually lucrative, such as human and natural resources as well as infrastructure.

Those at the bottom of the list include Mali, Mozambique, Madagascar, Chad Lesotho, Chad and Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe’s recent hardships due to Robert Mugabe’s government are not helping the southern African nation advance, and it finds itself at 117 out of the 130 surveyed. Countries like Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Sweden, Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Spain all reached the top ten.

This is the second year the WEF has released such a report, and Zimbabwe’s plight was of particular interest, since as recently as 2000, tourism was one of its most profitable sectors. Harare still struggles to draw tourists to the country, and the deflated economy as the result of Mugabe’s despotism, and likely nepotism, has no way to cope or make things better.