Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to establish critical success factors that could enable sustainable agritourism
development in Zimbabwe. This study was premised on the fact that there has been underutilisation of agricultural
attractions for tourism purposes, despite the country being agro-based and having several farms that could be
developed into agritourism farms. The study adopted a qualitative approach and a multi-case study design was
applied. In-depth interviews were carried out with 59 participants that were purposively selected from Manicaland
and Mashonaland West Provinces. The interviews were conducted between October 2020 and June 2021. The
participants included 34 farmers, 10 officials from the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural
Resettlement, five (5) from the Ministry of Environment, Climate, Tourism and Hospitality Industry and 10 tour
operators. The in-depth interviews were triangulated with observations in order to improve the reliability of the
findings. Analysis of data was conducted using thematic content analysis. NVIVO 12 was used to manage, analyse
data and to allow easy grouping of a theme for weighting purposes. The results revealed five (5) Critical Success
Factors for the development of sustainable agritourism in Zimbabwe which are: development of agritourism
products, education of farmers, funding, marketing as well as collaboration and partnerships. This implies that the
government and other relevant stakeholders have a critical role to play in the development of this tourism concept
through provision of capacity building programs as well as start-up funding. The study was carried out in two of
the ten provinces of the country which poses a limitation on the generalisability of results. Future studies which
use more than two provinces as case studies are imperative.
