Mozambique woos tourists

Mozambique plans to draw tourists back to its national parks by encouraging international hotel chains to provide luxury accommodation and so end the image of the existing tourism facilities as being old huts and tents with no showers.

The government said it would put out tenders soon for hotel building inside the Maputo special reserve in the country‘s south, part of a network of transnational parks that link Mozambique, South Africa and Swaziland.

The tourism ministry hopes that better and more extensive accommodation will bring more mainstream tourists, particularly wealthy Americans and Europeans in place of the more adventurous but often lower-spending travellers who now visit Mozambique. There are hopes of a boost from the football fans going to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

Mozambique also has the magnet of the efforts it has made to replenish its parks. Animals have been shipped from South Africa, particularly from the Kruger national park. Thousands of elephants, zebras and kudus have been moved across the border over the past five years at a cost of more than