BY PHUMELELE MKHONTA
MBABANE– Getting a booking for a simple Christmas dinner or for a weekend out at this stage of the festive season is increasingly becoming a challenge.
The reason behind this, according to Eswatini Tourism Authority (ETA) Head of Marketing Siboniso Madlopha, who said emaSwati were increasingly embracing domestic tourism.
This is the first festive season since the emergence of COVID-19 in March 2020, where emaSwati are travelling with minimum restrictions and with no masks. Hotels, restaurants, bars, tourist attraction places, hangout spots have been seen gaining momentum with regards to activity.
Getting bookings for Christmas luncheons, at this stage of the festive season, is becoming tedious as most places have declared themselves fully booked.
When sought for comment on the activity in the country, the ETA Head of Marketing said things started picking up after they introduced a campaign themed ‘Choose Eswatini This Festive’.
He said during the campaign, they promoted many places in the country and they gave out prizes to people who participated.
“This campaign gained momentum and we experienced many emaSwati visiting many tourist attraction sites for the day or booking out for a whole weekend,” said Madlopha.
Explaining, he also said they also have other concepts like the Tri-Land, which includes touring Eswatini-Mozambique-South Africa which has made many people from the country and outside to travel more.
The Head of Marketing then went on to encourage emaSwati to continue touring inside the country and book out- saying Eswatini had a lot to offer.
