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THE tourism industry is set for a major boom as the Government is putting in place measures to ensure the recovery of the crucial sector, a senior Government official said yesterday.

Acting Secretary for Environment and Tourism Mr Alfred Ncube said his ministry was hopeful that Zimbabwe would once again become the premier tourist destination in the region.

He was presenting oral evidence before the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee on the Operations of the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority and Zimbabwe Tourism Fund.

"We have put lots of measures in place to tap the tourism market and we are very hopeful of reviving the sector," he said.

Government has drafted a National Tourism Policy and Master Plan that are currently being assessed by stakeholders.

The policy plan seeks to address problems besetting the sector, and these include marketing initiatives, human resource development, taxes and other factors that hinder development of the tourism industry.

Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) deputy chief executive Mr Givemore Chidzidzi told the parliamentary committee that the statutory body was conducting a survey to ascertain the contribution of the tourism sector to the economy.

The authority had also identified potential areas in various parts of the country that could be designated as tourism zones, with focus presently on the Zambezi basin and the Matopo area.

ZTA, he said, had embarked on community-based tourism with a view to ensuring that communities also benefited from the lucrative sector.

However, Mr Chidzidzi said, the authority faced several challenges, with the major one being resource constraints.

The ZTA is funded primarily from a levy of 2 percent collected from tourism operators. This, Mr Chidzidzi said, was not enough to sustain its operations and the problem was compounded by the fact that the sector was still recovering from the slump.

He said some operators were, however, not paying the levy to the ZTA and punitive measures were being taken against such defaulters.

The authority also received a grant from the Government to cater for its overseas staff that included tourism attaches marketing the country.

Mr Chidzidzi said checks and balances have been put in place to ensure that the attaches accounted for the foreign currency allocated to them in which embassy officials were co-signatories to every bank transaction done from the authority's account.

Bank statements of transactions conducted by the attaches were also sent directly to the ZTA head office in Harare as a way of checking abuse of the tourism fund.

Mr Chidzidzi said all stakeholders must be involved in the marketing of the tourism sector as it had a strategic role to play in the development of the economy.

The recent introduction of flights by Air Zimbabwe between Victoria Falls and other regional destinations was set to boost tourist arrivals in the country, he said.

Zimbabwe's tourism industry is on the recovery path following negative publicity from Western media in virulent reaction to the country's land reform programme.

Despite the intense hostility and undermining, China last year granted Approved Destination Status to Zimbabwe, making it one of the eight countries in Africa the Chinese government encourages its citizens to visit.