The contrast with Victoria Falls could hardly be more stark. Zimbabwean businessmen say average hotel occupancy runs between 20 percent and 30 percent, and some of the bigger four- and five-star resorts have severely pared their staff to keep from closing. The world-famous grand dame of local hostelries, the Victoria Falls Hotel, marked its centennial this month with hallways of empty rooms despite an effort to lure celebrants with a 100th-birthday package.
The plight of merchants is, if anything, bleaker. Souvenir shops on the main street to Victoria Falls sometimes pass the entire day without ringing up a single sale, one vendor said. Some wholesalers and street vendors have given up and moved their operations to Zambia, prompting a government minister to denounce them as unpatriotic in a recent meeting with the town's beleaguered businessmen.
Things could change, of course: Longtime residents remember that Vic Falls prospered most in the 1970s, when Zambia's economic policies drove that nation and its tourism close to ruin.
In the meantime, merchants and hotel operators might take a tip from a Zimbabwe tourism Web site, and try to turn their bitter plight into tourism lemonade.
Zimbabwe's national parks "are completely safe to visit, as they are far from the cities where the instability exists," the site says. "Game lodges are desperate for occupants, so prices are extremely competitive. And low lodge occupancy means you'll have thousands of hectares of pristine game country virtually all to yourself."
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