|
 From The Editor
The editor has been in serious trouble this month, as a result of
the article entitled ‘Are We Missing The Train’ in the April issue.
First off was an email from the owners of
www.destinationlivingstone.com who informed me that this
website did not belong to the Livingstone Tourism Association. My
apologies for this – I was informed, in late January, by an office
bearer/immediate past office bearer of the LTA, that this web site
was theirs. Further investigations, following your email, showed
that the LTA no longer have a website. Perhaps something that they
should be looking at.
But this was nothing compared with the trouble I got into with one
of the owners of
www.visitzambia.co.zm who had this to say:
Sir/Madam, who ever you are. i think that there was a big
misunderstanding. The site you visited called visitzambia.co.zm is a
private site. Not a government one. We made it up so that people who
wanted to visit my country from the UK or Us would get more details
from us. We are not making any money out of it and we dont have any
government funding. Next time you decide to comment on a site that
is 4months old and still under construction, please do some home
work. I was pissed off to see my name Austin V Makota abused by
ignorant people. I want to give you and all your low down staff a
warning. Dont F&*%
(edited as it is not a word I wish to use in The Lowdown) with
me. Am in
Iraq right now doing a tour, and am not in the mood for bored ARSE
lazy kitchen crawling civilians to take a piss of what I'm trying to
do for my country. I am patriotic and I promise you that in November
when I come, you people will be apologising. A.V MAKOTA
In my article, I referred to an exchange of emails between the
visitzambia.co.zm team and one of my correspondents. In this
exchange of emails, it was more or less implied (or at least by my
way of thinking) that the site was an official site, something to do
with Government or quasi-Government (ZNTB ??) – first by them
calling themselves the ‘Visit Zambia Campaign Team’ (when we all
know that this campaign is running this year) and then not giving
an explanation that they are private individuals and secondly by
them not responding to a direct question ‘May I ask how big your
team is, whether you are all seconded from the Ministry of Tourism,
and whether or not you are specialists in tourism
development/marketing?’ We apologise for thinking that this site
was being done under the auspices of either the Ministry of Tourism
or ZNTB.
In my line of work, I receive a lot of information about what is
going on in the tourist world and was very interested to receive an
email, forwarded on to me a few weeks ago, which originated from the
visitzambia.co.zm team, asking operators in the tourism industry to
contact them for links from their web site. One of the paragraphs
had this to say: ‘Our
listing is free; however clients or customers will have to
contact you via our e-mail system so that we can take 10% commission
for every booking that is done via our website. The commission is to
enable us to meet our administrative costs.’
Forgive me, but if one is taking a commission on something, then one
is making money out of it, even if it only covers administrative
costs. And what is wrong with making money out of something – we all
have to put food on the table and if one is providing a service, one
is entitled to some form of payment.
Despite being a
bored ARSE lazy kitchen crawling civilian,
I am not one to sit around criticizing other people’s efforts so
have got off my bored ARSE and together with a colleague have
registered www.visitzambia.info and we (or more correctly, he) is
currently developing a web site which will be a true tourism
directory for Zambia (see article in this Lowdown). Listing on this
directory is free but tourist operators will have to already have
their own web site or if they will have to invest in this excellent
‘value for money’ form of advertising.
|
June 2005