Critical Success Factors for Sustainable Agritourism Development in Zimbabwe: A Multi-Stakeholder Perspective

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.