The Covid-19 pandemic on cultural heritage tourism in Zimbabwe: Post-Covid-19 recovery strategies

Abstract

This article interrogates how the world’s cultural and heritage tourism destinations’ performance was affected following the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2019. Various studies have been undertaken on the impacts of Covid-19 and post recovering strategies for cultural heritage tourism, especially in developed destinations with little attention given to developing destinations like Zimbabwe. This research assesses the impact of Covid-19 on tangible cultural and heritage tourism in Zimbabwe. It also proffers post-Covid-19 pandemic strategies for the segment under National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe (NMMZ). A qualitative approach was adopted and online interviews were conducted with frontline staff. Thematic analysis was employed to report the results. The results revealed that the employment of core employees was stable with salary delays, forced paid leave, and/or no transport allowances. On the other hand, most casual employees’ contracts were terminated. Loss of tourism revenue, deferment of projects, and cancellation of marketing activities, vandalism, and increased poaching were reported among �ive regions of the NMMZ. After the relaxation of lockdown measures, NMMZ started operating while adhering to WHO Covid-19 health and safety regulations. This brought a slight positive change in domestic tourists with a huge negative change in international tourists. The study, therefore, recommends social media usage, diversi�ication, and branding (SDB) destination recovery strategy as well as promotion of local travel to sustain cultural heritage tourism in Zimbabwe