Leveraging Digital Marketing Platforms for Sustainable Agritourism Development in Southern Africa: The Case of Zimbabwe’s Agritourism Sector

Agritourism as an alternative form of tourism is growing and its future is promising. This is underpinned by an increasingly digitised global economy, techno-savvy global tourism market, coupled with increasing internet penetration rate worldwide. Globally, agritourism has become a multi-billion-dollar sector. Consequently, competition in such a lucrative market is poised to surge. It thus becomes important for agritourism operators to invest in appropriate and effective cutting-edge marketing and promotional strategies. However, in most developing countries, agritourism remains invisible as agritourism resources are under-marketed both at an enterprise and the wider global market level. Despite remarkable advancements in information and communication technologies (ICTs), most agritourism operators still depend on traditional marketing approaches, yet the broader tourism marketing arena is changing. The advent of digital marketing platforms marked a significant development in promoting and marketing agritourism products worldwide. Increasing internet penetration rate in Africa presents exciting opportunities for agritourism enterprises to widen their frontiers around packaging and marketing aspects of agritourism products. This resonates with an ever-dynamic global tourism marketplace whose preferences and travel habits are increasingly influenced and shaped by digital technological innovations. In the era of ICTs, the digital space has become the new battleground. This chapter is aimed at examining how agritourism operators can leverage on digital platforms to market agritourism products in southern Africa, identify the specific digital marketing platforms which have been harnessed by developing countries to market agritourism and to establish opportunities available in the agritourism value chain on which digital marketing platforms can be deployed to enhance long-term sustainable development of agritourism in emerging economies. Based on agritourism operators from three provinces in Zimbabwe, namely Manicaland, Mashonaland West and Masvingo, a qualitative approach was adopted. Semi-structured interviews were conducted among key informants selected from agritourism operators. This was augmented with document analysis. Findings show that agritourism operators in southern African countries, to a larger extent, leverage on digital platforms to market and promote sustainable agritourism development. Furthermore, the study identified a wide array of digital platforms which have been harnessed by agritourism operators in southern Africa most notably Facebook, X (Twitter) and Tiktok. The study also established vast opportunities in the agritourism value chain on which digital marketing platforms can be deployed, such as packaging of agritourism products, real-time access of agritourism and travel-related information, itinerary showcasing, agritourism product visual displays and cutting on intermediaries. The study is significant as it contributes modestly to the growing agritourism marketing literature from a technology lens. Policy and managerial implications are given.