The Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) has launched a marketing program in China to take advantage of the Approved Destination Status (ADS) awarded to Zimbabwe by the Asian country, the Herald newspaper reported on Tuesday.

A Joint Commission on China bringing together key players in the tourism industry has been formed to spearhead the program.

The program has already seen the authority holding workshops to appraise hotels on how to prepare Chinese food in anticipation of an increase in tourist arrivals from that destination.

Mary-Anne Situma, the human resources director at the authority, was quoted as saying that an electronic brochure had been launched in January to attract more tourists from Asia.

She said as the marketing program begins to bear fruit, there was need for Zimbabwe to prepare itself to cater for the Asian market.

"What we are trying to do is to equip facilities to cater for different needs of the Chinese. We are not saying we will not serve our traditional foods but we are adding variety so that people can choose," she said, adding that while the focus was on Chinese food, other Asian countries would not be overlooked even though there are similarities in cuisine in the Far East.

She said the program was necessitated by the "Look East" policy which was promulgated in the face of a decline in tourist arrivals from the traditional markets such as Germany, Britain and the United States due to negative publicity in the Western media and some sections of the so-called local independent press.