The outspoken and often referred to as the youthful Minister of Tourism for Zimbabwe, Hon. Dr. Walter Mzembi, was appointed as the Minister of Foreign Affairs this evening.

This was the result of a cabinet reshuffle by President Mugabe.

The new Minister of Tourism and Hospitality is the Hon. E. Mbwembwe.
Edgar Mbwembwe was re-elected as the member of parliament for Chikomba East in July 2013.[When Ray Kaukonde was ousted as chairperson of Mashonaland East, Mbwembwe entered the race to succeed him against other Zanu-Pf bigwigs such as Joel Biggie Matiza and Aeneas Chigwedere. Mbwembwe lost to Matiza who was then Minister of State for Provincial Affairs in Mashonaland East before being replaced by Retired Brigadier-General Ambrose Mutinhiri. On September 11, 2015, Mbwembwe was sworn in as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. Today he was appointed as the minister of Tourism and Hospitality.

The Hon. Walter Mzembi recently ran for UNWTO Secretary General position.

He is viewed as open, with a global mindset and tourism as his passion.

Foreign Minister Mzembi may be the man able to raise the bar one-hundred fold for Zimbabwe. A new era in Zimbabwe is likely to begin.

When the ZANU-PF–Movement for Democratic Change national unity government was sworn in on February 13, 2009, Mzembi became Minister of Tourism. Of paramount importance has been his role in the organizing of the UNWTO co-hosted by Zimbabwe and Zambia in August 2013. In 2017 Mzembi was the candidate of the African Union for the position of the 2018-21 Secretary-General of the World Tourism Organization.

One day when historians of the tourism industry write about the first part of the twenty-first century they may view the week of October 1, 2017 as one of the tourism and travel industry’s harder months.
The week began with news of terrorist attacks in both France and Canada and quickly moved onto the tragedy that took place in Las Vegas.

Many people will desire to know the personal history of Stephen Paddock and what motivated him.  In reality, there are other issues more important than his personal history, and the tourism industry needs to be careful not to allow itself to be seduced into spending a great deal of time on irrelevant facts.  Instead, the tourism industry must concentrate on the most important issue: how do we protect visitors, locals, event attendees, employees, and security and law enforcement agents in an age of uncertainty and violence. These questions and the answers we discover are the lessons that can we learn from the Las Vegas attack. What has happened is now history, and it is our task to help the victims heal as best as they can and seek ways in which the tourism industry together with governments and law enforcement can we work together to prevent future tragedies.

Before examining the situation in Las Vegas it behooves us to review and clarify some important facts to consider.

1) There is a difference between an “acts of criminal terror” and a “terrorist act”.  The former is a terrible act that hurts many people but does not have a political motivation. Terrorism, on the other hand, has a clear political motivation.  Terrorism has specific goals and as such deadly acts are used as part of an overall strategy to achieve those goals.  In the case of Las Vegas we know of no overall political goals.  Instead, the perpetrator may well have acted for personal motives or for reasons of insanity but neither of these are political motives.  Assuming that this is not a terrorist act we shall have to see it as a pure criminal act.

As this article is being written, there is no reason to assume that Stephan Paddock was anything other than a highly mentally disturbed individual.  Should we learn that he had other motivations or political ties then a new analysis regarding the politics will be needed but that analysis will have little to do with enhancing both hotel and event security.

2) Hotels, and other tourism locations are soft targets in an age of terrorism.  Even though at the time of this writing (October 4, 2017) it does not appear that Stephen Paddock had a terrorism connection, the fact that hotels are easy targets should become an important risk management issue.  An attack on a hotel, in most cases, will receive a great deal of publicity and potentially cause a great deal of damage to human beings, to a place’s reputation and to its tourism industry.  This may be one of the reasons that terrorists have attacked hotels in multiple cities around the world.  The fact that hotels have been targeted internationally means that no matter what the reason, hotels and other places of lodging are going to have to have to be creative in how they protect their guests and property.

3) In most cases, architects designed hotels in the western nations during periods of less violence.  Many of these hotels are quite beautiful but also difficult to protect.  For example, hotels with rooms overlooking ground floor atriums are challenges for security personnel.  In a like manner, reception or check-in areas were designed not with security in mind but for customer satisfaction and ease of meetings. The same is true of both valet and self-parking areas.  The heightened need for greater security means that many hotels, and other tourism installations such as stadiums, will need to be retrofitted. Remodeling these structures is both a difficult and expensive process and may take some time to accomplish.

4) In our new age, hotels and other tourism industry locations such as stadiums, museums, and transportation terminals must become aware of a whole series of new potentially devastating weapons of attacks.  These include the use of biochemical weapons, drones, and cyber attacks that can literally bring a hotel to a stoppage.  Furthermore, attack weapons continue to be available in smaller sizes, and this “miniturization” means that any of these weapons may be harder to detect.  As we look into the future, hotel security personnel must become aware of nanotechnology and the fact that powerful weapons can be contained in extremely small spaces.

5) No matter what we do, there is no total security. We can lessen the chance of danger, injury, or death, but no matter what we do, there will always be a risk.

Looking to the future

In order to ease public concerns, some immediate steps should be considered. These are not long-term solutions but act as immediate solutions.  Among these are:

• High coordination between law enforcement and hotel security personnel. For example, Las Vegas’ police department (Metro) has extremely close relations with its hotel industry and those relations helped to save many lives. Its officers should be commended for their bravery and the outstanding job which they performed.
• Upgrading the security industry. Security can no longer be seen as merely a great deal of muscle. Security personnel must be trained in a number of psychological and sociological analytics. This means increased budgets, increased attendance at security conferences such as the annual Las Vegas international Safety and Security Conference (to be held in April of 2018), and increase updating of the security issues on both the macro and the micro level.  In today’s world, a criminal or a terrorist can easily slip across borders or travel across oceans.
• Baggage inspection. It may be impossible to inspect every bag, and even hotels can inspect every bag, there is nothing from preventing a guest to bring in a weapon at a later time or simply under his or her clothing.  However, there is much that can be done by using high levels of creativity.  For example, it may be necessary to use trained dogs and obtain other technical devices that “smell trouble”.  The tourism industry should be working with entrepreneurs to create new less invasive methods that permit privacy but at the same time detect threats and potential problems.
• Training hotel staffs to be the front line of security. This training may include everything from questioning why a “do not disturb “ sign is on a room door for more than a few hours to notifying security if some seems or smells amiss. Frontline personnel are the eyes and ears of a tourism entity such as a hotel.
• The tourism and the security industry must be careful not to become overly reactive to the “last” event.  What occurred in Las Vegas is now history.  It is essential to help the victims rebuild their lives to the best extent possible. Tourism officials, none the less, need to prepare for future events and think through how the tourism industry will face future challenges not yet considered.  It would do everyone in tourism to consider how an act of terrorism or a criminal act may impact all sectors of a local industry. The bottom line is that what occurred in Las Vegas can occur in almost any city or resort around the world.  All of us must be careful not to politicize a tragedy but learn from it and then seek to understand future problems and find ways to mitigate these risks with diligence and clarity of thought and purpose.

Dr. Peter Tarlow is an expert on tourism security and economic development. He is also a contributor for eTN.His email is [email protected]

It’s surprising the worlds largest tourism organizations and leaders in world tourism, UNWTO and WTTC did not react very much to one of the toughest two weeks in travel and tourism for a long time. WTTC issued this statement on their website,:

The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) is deeply shocked and saddened by the shooting in Las Vegas earlier today. Gloria Guevara, President & CEO, WTTC, said: “I send my heartfelt condolences to all the friends and families of the victims and those hurt in this callous attack in Las Vegas. We stand strong and united with the people of Las Vegas as they go through these difficult times. On behalf of the Travel & Tourism sector we offer our full support to the city, one of the United States’ most thriving tourist destinations as WTTC experienced during our Global Summit in 2011, as it will come to terms with the aftermath of this attack.”

There is a lot going on. Caribbean, Mexico, Guam, South Korea, Catalonia and now Los Vegas – tourism is under global attack. Challenging times are emerging after the first Caribbean Crisis committee met at the UNWTO General Assembly in Chengdu, China last month.

Maybe it’s time for a global tourism crisis committee to be formed to address such problems and coordinate with UNWTO, WTTC and the many other important organizations.

Not one country issued a travel warning for the United States. It can only be hoped this is a new trendsetter and the United States also will refrain from issuing travel warnings at future terror incidents in Europe or other regions. Travel warnings won’t resolve the issue, and they would make it worse. The world should push the US for gun control. This is a problem getting completely out of hand. What could be the logical reason for the 2nd Amendment in the year 2017?

Many organizations did have something to say, including the International Nightlife Association, said they strongly condemn the shooting occurred near the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, Nevada (U.S.A.). At the same time, we express our heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of the victims in this tragic moment as they seek to recover from this deeply disturbing tragedy. For this reason, the International Nightlife Association will lead a moment of silence at the International Nightlife Congress to be held next week in Ibiza (Spain) in order to honor its victims and as a signal of protest as the nightlife image has been unfairly and cowardly targeted once again with innocent people involved.

Once more, after the attacks in Bataclan in Paris, Club Pulse in Orlando and Club Reina in Istanbul the nightlife sector has been hit once again with a cowardly act of violence involving firearms. We stand here in moral indignation and are, at the same time, filled with a huge sense of powerlessness since at least 50 innocent people have been killed and at least 400 others seriously injured while enjoying nightlife, generating a false sensation that nightlife is unsafe when it is not, as the tragic events have been due to an unavoidable cowardly attack.

At the same time we feel great indignation as events like these seriously damage the image and the prestige of the territory where they happen, which is unfair but a constant reality. Las Vegas, where we celebrate our international congress alternatively every two years, is precisely one of the safest and most pregistous places for nightlife entertainment in the world.

Next week is IMEX time. IMEX America and Meeting and Incentive travel professionals from around the globe will meet in Las Vegas.
eTN is standing by at our stand in Las Vegas for feedback.