Safari boom: rich people from Russia became interested in hunting in Zimbabwe

As Bloomberg notes, the other day a tourist from Russia spent half a million dollars to organize one of these tours for two weeks.Emmanuel Fundira, President of the Zimbabwe Safari Operators Association, told the agency that recently there has been an increase in interest in this area of recreation, especially among tourists from Russia.

Several circumstances contributed to this.Previously, wealthy tourists from the USA and Europe came to Zimbabwe on safari.

But after the introduction of sanctions for human rights violations and election fraud, this direction became inaccessible to them.The Zimbabwean authorities are trying to strengthen relations with China, Russia and Belarus.

The tourist flow from these countries is growing, since after the introduction of anti-Russian sanctions, many previously popular destinations for premium holidays have become inaccessible to the rich from Russia. Zimbabwe seeks to use friendly ties with Russia to develop tourism.Emmanuel Fundira noted that the development of safari tourism will be promoted by the Russia-Africa Economic Forum scheduled for July 26-29, which will be held in St. Petersburg.

According to him, it is planned to advertise safari tours to Zimbabwe among wealthy Russians at the forum.Z Imbabwe ranks second in Africa in terms of the number of elephants.

There are about 100 thousand of them in the country. In the country, you can officially get a permit to hunt an elephant. Such a permit costs only 10 thousand dollars.